WOMEN OF THE WAR 

By BARBARA McLAREN 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

The Right Hon. H. H. ASQUITH, M.P, 




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WOMEN OF THE WAR 



All profits derived from the sale of this volume will be 

given to the joint War Committee of the British Red 

Cross Society and the Order of Si John. 



WOMEN 
OF THE WAR 



BY 



BARBARA McLAREN 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

The Right Hon. H. H. ASQUITH, M.P. 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 

LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO 
MCMXVII 






J/sXf^ 



INTRODUCTION 

I have read this volume with an interest which 1 
feel confident will be widely shared by the English- 
speaking public. Its simple and unexaggerated 
account of the varied fields of work which have 
enlisted, during the last three years, the energies and 
efforts of women of our race, forms a unique chapter 
in the annals of war. 

Looked at as a whole, these narratives are as good 
evidence as could be found of the depth and uni- 
versality of the appeal which the war has made to 
our women, not only for sympathy but for service. 
For the first time it has taught us as a nation to 
realise how large and how decisive is the part that 
can be played in a world-wide contest by those 
who are prevented from taking a place in the actual 
fighting line. There is no question here of any form 
of compulsion. The services and sacrifices which are 
described in these pages were given and suffered 
spontaneously by volunteers. That they should 
have been on such a scale, covering such wide and 
diverse activities, and shared in by women of every 
class and of so many types of special or general 
capacity, is a speaking tribute, not only to the 
quickened sense of national duty, but to the com- 
manding and irresistible authority of a great cause. 



vi WOMEN OF THE WAR 

Hardly less remarkable is the testimony which 
this book affords to the versatility, one might say 
the inventiveness, displayed in the share which 
women have contributed to the general stock of 
patriotic effort. They have done and are doing 
things which, before the war, most of us would have 
said were both foreign to their nature and beyond 
their physical capacity. It would be invidious to 
discriminate, but anyone turning over these pages 
will find abundant illustrations. Nor can it be 
doubted that these experiences and achievements 
will, when the war is over, have a permanent effect 
upon both the statesman's and the economist's con- 
ception of the powers and functions of women in the 
reconstructed world. 

But I must leave the book to speak for itself and 
teach its own lessons. It does not profess to be an 
exhaustive account of women's work in the war. It 
is content with the more modest task of selecting 
and describing some typical cases. I know the 
scrupulous care with which it has been prepared, and 
1 heartily commend it, not only as a trustworthy and 
uncoloured delineation of actual fact, but as a message 
of stimulus and inspiration to us all. 

H. H. ASQUITH. 



PREFACE 

These accounts of the work of some British women 
during the war have been collected, not with any 
attempt at even outlining the scope of women's 
achievement, but simply as pictures, showing the 
influence which women in varied spheres have exer- 
cised in the course of the war. Some of those whose 
records follow are women who, by force of character 
and personality, would always have stood apart, even 
in the limited opportunities of peace time. Others 
are taken rather as types of workers, representing 
many hundreds who are serving the country in 
similar ways. The selection has seemed at times 
invidious ; but it isr easy to realise that when the 
numbers of workers are so immense in each of the 
fields of activity mentioned in the book, no com- 
plete record of individual effort can be attempted. 

The object in writing of the experiences of par- 
ticular workers is to present a more vivid story than 
a merely general description could convey. True 
understanding of our women's war work can come 
only from personal experience or through the power 
of a keen imagination. Those who have no other 
opportunities can appreciate that work by visualising 
the measure of endurance, patience, determination, 
and unflinching courage demanded for the successful 



viii WOMEN OF THE WAR 

performance of the tasks which women have under- 
taken. If any of these chapters succeed in creating 
a living atmosphere in which readers picture them- 
selves working under similar conditions in similar 
fields of labour, the primary object of the book will 
have been fulfilled. Much will be written hereafter 
on every form of women's service touched on in these 
little accounts. They claim only to be windows 
through which may be seen that wide vista which 
has for its foreground the fulfilment of the great 
tasks of the war, and for its background a limit- 
less horizon of potential effort. 

B. McL. 

August 4, 1917. 



CONTENTS 



I. DR GARRETT ANDERSON, C.B.E., AND 
DR FLORA MURRAY, C.B.E. 



PAGK 



The first women doctors to manage a Military Hospital under the 

War Office. This hospital is entirely staffed by women . . 1 

II. LADY PAGET, G.B.E. 

Lady Paget took a hospital unit to Serbia when the typhus 
epidemic was raging there. She remained at Uskub with her staff 
after the invasion of Serbia, continuing her work during enemy 
occupation 

III. MISS LILIAN BARKER, C.B.E., AND 
MISS MABEL COTTERELL 

Two outstanding Welfare Workers under the Ministry of Munitions. 
Miss Barker is Lady Superintendent at Woolwich, and Miss Cotterell 
at Gretna 9 



IV. MISS C. E. MATHESON AND THE VILLAGE 
LAND WORKERS 

Miss Matheson has been working on the land for over two years, 

and has specialised in work with live stock 14 

V. DR ELSIE INGLIS 

The founder of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. Dr Inglis has 
worked in Serbia, where she was taken prisoner. She is now 
serving in Rumania 19 



VI. MISS SPROT, THE MISSES PLAYFAIR, AND 
LADY BADEN-POWELL 

Outstanding workers in the Y.M.C.A. Canteens in France. Lady 
Baden- Powell has started Boy Scout and Girl Guide Canteens . . 24 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 



VII. MISS AGNES BORTHWICK 



PAGE 



Miss Borthwick is Works Manager in a big filling factory under 
the Ministry of Munitions. She is the first woman to hold this 
position in a Government factory 29 

VIII. MRS ST CLAIR STOBART 

Mrs Stobart was with hospital units in Brussels, Antwerp, Cher- 
bourg, and finally in Serbia, where, attached to the Serbian army 
with a field ambulance column, she accompanied the army in its 
heroic retreat 32 

IX. MISS E. G. BATHER AND MISS DOROTHY RAVENSCROFT 
Two workers in charge of Remount Depots for the War Office . 37 

X. MISS EDITH STONEY AND DR FLORENCE STONEY 

Two X-ray specialists. Miss Stoney is working X-rays in a hospital 

in Salonika ; Dr Stoney is in a military hospital in London . . 41 

XI. THE BARONESS DE T'SERCLAES AND 
MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM 

These ladies have worked in Belgium since the beginning of the 
war, and are the only women allowed by the Belgian military 
authorities to be in the firing line 47 

XII. LADY MARY HAMILTON AND MISS DRUMMOND 
Typical workers engaged on skilled processes in munition factories . 50 

XIII. MRS FURSE, G.B.E., R.R.C., AND 
LADY PERROTT, R.R.C. 

Mrs Furse's successful administration of the Women's Voluntary 
Aid Detachments has been an important factor in the organisation 
of their invaluable work. Lady Perrott's work, both before and 
during the war, has added greatly to the numbers and the efficiency 
of the Voluntary Aid Detachments 55 

XIV. COMMANDANT DAMER DAWSON AND MRS GARDEN 

Commandant Damer Dawson has organised the Women Police. 

Mrs Carden has helped to organise Women Patrols .... 62 



CONTENTS xi 



XV. MISS LENA ASHWELL, O.B.E. 



PAGE 



Miss Ashwell originated the Concert Parties at the front which have 
had such a stimulating influence. For over two years she has 
organised, developed, and financed the scheme on an ever-increas- 
ing scale 67 



XVI. MISS VIOLETTA THURSTAN 

Since August 1914 Miss Thurstan has been nursing in Belgium and 
in Russia, where she was wounded in the trenches. She is now 
Matron at a great Belgian hospital 73 



XVII. H.R.H. PRINCESS BEATRICE, THE HON. LADY 
LAWLEY, G.B.E., AND THE COUNTESS OF GOSFORD 

Workers in the various organisations of hospital supplies and 
comforts .... 78 



XVIII. MISS EDITH HOLDEN, R.R.C. 
The Matron of a great base hospital 86 

XIX. MRS GASKELL, C.B.E., AND THE 
HON. MRS ANSTRUTHER 

The organisers of the War Library and the Camps Library, which 
supply books to the Army and to the siek and wounded ... 91 

XX. MISS LILIAN RUSSELL AND MISS ALICE BROWN 

Workers for the Y.M.C.A. in France, who are managing hostels for 

the relations of the wounded 98 

XXI. MISS DOROTHY MATHEWS AND 
MISS URSULA WINSER 

Miss Mathews is a typical agricultural worker, engaged in plough- 
ing and heavy land work. Miss Winser drives an agricultural 
tractor 102 

XXII. MISS EVELYN LYNE AND MISS MADGE GREG 

Two representative Voluntary Aid Detachment workers who have 

done canteen and rest-station work in France .... 106 



xii WOMEN OF THE WAR 

XXIII. MRS LEACH 
The head of the organisation of Army women-cooks . . . 110 

XXIV. MRS GRAHAM JONES 

A representative V.A.D. worker who has specialised in motor work. 
She went to France in charge of the first Women's Motor Ambulance 
Unit under the British Red Cross Society . . . . .113 

XXV. MISS GERTRUDE SHAW 

Miss Shaw has specialised in the housing and canteen organisation 
for the Ministry of Munitions, and is now Chief Inspectresa of 
Hostels and Canteens 117 

XXVI. MRS HARLEY 

Mrs Harley worked for the Scottish Women's Hospitals from the 
outbreak of war, and was killed by a shell at Monastir in March 
1917 while tending Serbian refugees . . . . . .120 

XXVII. MISS ETHEL ROLFE AND THE WOMEN 
ACETYLENE WELDERS 

Women engaged on a skilled process largely used in aeroplane 
construction 124 

XXVIII. LADY LUGARD 

Lady Lugard helped to organise the War Refugees Coiumittee for 

the reception and allocation of Belgian refugees . . . . 129 

XXIX. MISS CHRISTOBEL ELLIS 

The head of the branch of the Women's Legion which organises 
women motor-drivers for the Army . . . . . . 136 

XXX. MADAME BRUNOT AND MISS MARION MOLE 

These ladies lived in Cambrai under German rule for over two 
years, and did splendid work for wounded and prisoners . . 139 

XXXI. SOME ARMY NURSES 
Typical examples of nurses in various forms of hospital service . 143 




8* 



>4 H 



S 



To face p. i. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 



i 

DR GARRETT ANDERSON, C.B.E., AND 
DR FLORA MURRAY, C.B.E. 

Dr Garrett Anderson and Dr Flora Murray have 
contributed one of the finest pages to the annals of 
women's work during the war, and by their success 
have greatly advanced the position of women in the 
medical world. 

Dr Garrett Anderson was already a well-known 
surgeon, and Dr Flora Murray equally well known 
as a physician, in pre-war days, the former having 
qualified in 1897, and the latter in 1903. Dr Garrett 
Anderson is a daughter of Mrs Elizabeth Garrett 
Anderson, M.D., the first British medical woman. 

During the month after the war broke out, Dr 

Garrett Anderson and Dr Flora Murray together 

organised a Voluntary Women's Hospital Unit, 

staffed by medical women, and offered their services 

to the French Red Cross. They established a 

hospital of 100 beds in Paris, at Claridge's Hotel, 

Champs Elysees, and it is notable that this was the 

first of the voluntary hospitals in Paris to start 

work in September 1914. Both British and French 

wounded were received and treated. 

i 1 



2 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

It was not long before the excellent work of these 
two doctors attracted very special attention, with the 
result that they were approached by the War Office, 
and asked to organise a hospital at Wimereux near 
Boulogne, attached to the Royal Army Medical 
Corps. This invitation was a considerable triumph, 
for it was the first time that medical women were 
officially singled out by the British Government and 
given equal responsibility with medical men. 

The Army medical authorities were quick to realise 
how wisely their trust had been bestowed, and, in 
February 1915, Dr Garrett Anderson and Dr Flora 
Murray were asked to take up work on a larger 
scale, and to undertake the entire management of the 
Endell Street Hospital, a large military hospital in 
London. 

During its two years of work for the sick and 
wounded, no military hospital has succeeded in 
establishing a finer record. To see it is a wonderful 
experience. The hospital consists of 17 wards, with 
578 beds, and is entirely staffed by women — sur- 
geons, doctors, pathologists, oculists, dental surgeons, 
anaesthetists, dispensers, nurses, orderlies. The only 
men are the patients. 

Sir Alfred Keogh, the Director- General of the 
Army Medical Service, said, when speaking of it : 
" The hospital is in every respect a military hospital, 
differing in no way from any other military hospital 
in the country. Major operations comparable to 
those in any other institution are performed, and 
there is no limitation whatever, either medical or 
surgical, to the functions which the staff of the 
hospital undertakes. Particularly excellent work has 
been done in the pathological departments. A special 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 3 

feature of the surgery of the hospital has been the 
adoption there of a new method of treating wounds, 
introduced by Professor Rutherford Morison." 

This treatment consists of the use of a bismuth- 
iodoform-paraffin paste for cases of septic wounds 
and fractures. Writing of the treatment, Dr Garrett 
Anderson says : " In every case fcetor has dis- 
appeared, sepsis has subsided, and union of bone has 
taken place with astonishing rapidity, while the 
condition of the patient has benefited greatly from 
being spared painful daily dressings." 

Set in the very centre of London, and surrounded 
by tall buildings, with the buzz and whirl of London 
traffic all about it, a visitor would be inclined at first 
to think the hospital a sad and gloomy place. But 
that impression soon passes, for in the wards, bright 
with colour, in the recreation room and library, but 
most of all in the faces of the soldier patients, happi- 
ness and contentment are the prevailing elements. 
An atmosphere is as hard to describe as it is easy 
to recognise, but the atmosphere of the Women's 
Hospital breathes rest and quiet, and the mutual 
confidence between patients and doctors which is so 
invaluable an asset in successful treatment. 

Here, then, for the first time, it has been proved 
beyond all dispute, both to the medical profession 
and to the world outside, that women doctors and 
surgeons can equal the success of men in all branches 
of their calling, and not only with the ailments of 
women and children. The work that these women 
have proved themselves able to accomplish and to 
continue without sign of strain during three years of 
war ought at last to secure the recognition that it 
deserves. Dr Garrett Anderson and Dr Flora M urray 



4 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

will feel that they have worked successfully, not only 
for their patients, but for medical women in general, 
if, as a result of their demonstration, the doors of the 
medical schools are thrown open to women. That 
the majority of medical women working for their 
country to-day have been forced to gain their know- 
ledge and skill in the schools of the enemy is surely 
one of the conditions which the war will sweep away 
for ever. 




Hugh Cecil. LADY PAGET, G.B.E. 



To face p. 5. 



II 

LADY PAGET, G.B.E. 

As a monument to human endurance and courage 
there can be no more wonderful record than that of 
Lady Paget's Hospital Unit in Serbia. The whole 
unit, several members of which were Americans, 
worked with a devotion and a loyalty unsurpassed 
during the war, but in Lady Paget they had a born 
leader, and a woman of indomitable heroism. At 
all the crucial moments, of which there were many, 
Lady Paget's wisdom, tact, foresight, and rapidity of 
decision saved the situation and enabled her hospital 
to render inestimable work to stricken Serbia. 

Lady Paget, as wife of a former British Minister 
to Serbia, already possessed a wide experience of 
Balkan hospital work, having worked through the 
two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. 

In November 1914, Lady Paget's Hospital Unit 
reached Uskub. This was one of the most critical 
phases for Serbia in the whole war. The Austrian 
invasion was at its height, and the Serbian armies, 
their ammunition exhausted, were being driven help- 
lessly through the country before the enemy guns. 
Uskub was one of the main hospital bases, though 
the conditions there were of the roughest as regards 
sanitation and hospital equipment. As soon as Lady 
Paget's hospital could be hurriedly installed it was 



6 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

filled to overflowing with wounded Serbian soldiers, 
and for three months the work was incessant. 
When the surgical work began to slacken, the great 
typhus epidemic swept over the country. The 
Serbians had no means of meeting it, and Lady 
Paget, with two doctors and two nurses, by super- 
human labours prepared a great Typhus Colony at 
Uskub, Lady Paget herself undertaking the hardest 
menial work of scrubbing and cooking, and sparing 
herself no risk in washing and caring for the infected 
patients. By the labours of this gallant staff of five, 
and some Austrian prisoners working under them 
as orderlies, huge barracks were converted into 
hospital buildings and filled with hundreds of typhus- 
stricken soldiers within little over a week. Then 
Lady Paget herself caught the deadly fever, and for 
many days her life was despaired of. She was so 
much beloved throughout Serbia that her danger 
was felt as a national disaster, and the children of 
peasants in far-away places, where she was known 
only by name, were taught to pray for her daily, 
while in the synagogues a special day was set apart 
for prayers for her recovery. 

In the spring, before Lady Paget was fully restored 
to health, she returned to England to prepare for 
further work, and in July 1915 she again went to 
Serbia. She returned to her previous headquarters at 
Uskub and reorganised her staff, and during August 
and September the hospital was continuously full. 

About the middle of October the storm of invasion 
again broke over the unhappy little country, and, 
while the German and Austrian armies swept down 
from the north, the Bulgarians poured in from the 
east. It was at this point that Lady Paget had one 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 7 

of her most momentous decisions to make. The 
Serbian population was flying before the oncoming 
tide of the enemy armies — "one of the greatest 
tragedies in history," Lady Paget wrote ; " a nation 
was shattered, crushed, and driven forth into the 
wilderness to die of cold and hunger." But, refusing 
to desert her Serbian patients, and in the hope of 
being able to save her large hospital stores for the 
help of the refugees, Lady Paget, with her staff, 
gallantly decided, in spite of strong opposition, to 
remain at Uskub and face the enemy. Describing 
this critical decision, a friend wrote of her : " Lady 
Paget's will was the only fixed point that night in 
the universal land-slide around her. By setting her 
single will against the stampede, she turned back the 
flood of panic that was hurrying the wretched inhabi- 
tants of the town away to certain destruction ; for 
the next day in Uskub, when it became known that 
the British Mission was staying to look after the 
wounded, it went far to reassure the people, and 
hundreds who would otherwise have gone to their 
death in the icy mountains of Albania remained in 
the shelter of their homes." 

With the coming of the Bulgarians on October 
22nd began a long and difficult period. Until the 
middle of February 1916 the Hospital Unit remained 
at Uskub, prisoners in the enemy's hands. But, 
owing to Lady Paget's tact and resource, they were 
able to carry on work of inestimable value, not only 
in nursing many hundred wounded, both Serbian, 
Bulgarian, and Austrian, but also in feeding and 
clothing thousands of Serbian refugees. Through 
the worst weeks of winter, between three and four 
thousand were fed and clothed daily, and from first 



8 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

to last over 70,000 were relieved entirely from Lady 
Paget's stores. It is a remarkable tribute to her 
personality that the enemy, though not too plentifully 
equipped themselves, should yet have allowed her 
to retain possession of this large quantity of stores, 
trusting as they did to her scrupulous sense of fair- 
ness and straight-dealing. 

By February 1916, Lady Paget and her workers 
had done all in their power for Serbia. By this time 
the refugees had been either interned or sent to their 
homes, the hospital had been evacuated of patients, 
the staff was worn out with hard work, and the stores 
were exhausted. After difficult negotiations Lady 
Paget obtained permission to leave and was able to 
return with her unit to England. 

This is the third war in which she has given herself 
unsparingly to help the Serbians, and she has become 
an object of worship to this desolate people. To 
mark the national gratitude, King Peter has bestowed 
upon her the first class of the Order of St Sava, 
an honour that had never before been given to an 
uncrowned woman. 




To face p. 9. 



Ill 

MISS LILIAN BARKER, C.B.E., AND 
MISS MABEL COTTERELL 

The first element in the great development of 
munition work during the war, which has drawn 
women in tens of thousands into the service of their 
country, has certainly been the all-powerful motive 
of patriotism. But second to this, the practical 
success of the work has been made possible largely 
through the recognition and development of welfare 
work. What we understand nowadays by "wel- 
fare" does not consist merely in the provision of 
canteens and other amenities for workers. It means 
the study of human nature, the introduction of the 
humanising element into work. Experience has 
proved that there is nothing in the world so calcu- 
lated to get the best out of human nature as the 
human touch. Welfare work, undertaken sporadically 
in this country since the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, has been gradually introduced in our factories 
by the more enlightened employers, but the advent 
of women in such great numbers to munition works 
has set the seal of official approval on the system. 

The result of this work cannot be better illustrated 
than by the example of what has been accomplished 
by two of the most successful welfare workers. 

Miss Lilian Barker, the Lady Superintendent at 



10 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, supervises the 
women operators employed there with the good 
humour and sagacity of an ideal statesman. When 
Miss Barker took up her work at Woolwich in 
December 1915, there were 400 women and girls 
employed at the Arsenal. To-day there are over 
25,000, every one of whom has been personally en- 
gaged by this "superwoman" of Woolwich. 

Round Miss Barker's office there gathers a constant 
throng of workers, and it is one of her tasks, with the 
assistants whom she has trained, to straighten out 
their difficulties, to inquire into their grievances, and 
to act if need be as mediator with their superior 
officers. She advises all who come to her for help as 
to their health, their meals, their recreation, and the 
hundred and one details which the domestic guardian 
of a huge works can set to rights by understanding, 
patience, and tact. It is hard to give an adequate 
impression of the wonderful atmosphere which Miss 
Barker has created at Woolwich, but a visitor privi- 
leged to go round the shops in her company cannot 
fail to be deeply struck, not only by her influence 
with the workers, but by the general sense of con- 
tentment and health. As one approaches a shop, 
one hears the girls singing at their work — a sure 
sign of happiness. When Miss Barker enters, their 
faces light up, gay greetings pass, and one feels 
instinctively the confidence and mutual trust with 
which she has inspired her great family. 

Miss Barker makes frequent tours round the 
women's shops (it is said to take a week to go over 
the whole Arsenal), and all the time she is on the 
watch for possible improvements — perhaps the better 
ventilation of a factory, or some needed alteration in 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 11 

a cloakroom — stopping ever and again for a word 
with a girl on some matter relating to her well-being. 
It is rare to see a sickly face, even among the 
workers in the danger zone, and visitors are struck 
by the high proportion of good looks, even of beauty. 
The workers are drawn from every grade of society, 
but the democracy of the overall and cap levels all 
distinctions. 

Recently much trouble was experienced by the 
Arsenal management owing to bad timekeeping in 
the shops. Able to earn considerable sums of money 
by working only three or four days weekly, the girls 
were apt to stay away for the rest of the week. Miss 
Barker was approached and asked to take over the 
responsibility for the timekeeping, never before part 
of her work, and the results were astonishing. " If 
you leave 200 fuse-rings incomplete," she would say, 
in making personal appeals to small groups of girls, 
"they delay 200 fuses. 200 fuses delay 200 shells 
from being sent out to the front. Think what 200 
shells might mean to Tommy in a tight corner ! " 
Miss Barker knows the wisdom of instilling into each 
worker the sense of her personal responsibility, and 
under her inspiration the timekeeping difficulty is no 
longer an acute problem. 

Miss Mabel Cotterell is another welfare worker 
who has accomplished a stupendous task. Little 
more than a year ago the first buildings of the 
greatest Filling Factory in the country began to 
rise from a desolate bog on the borders of England 
and Scotland. During the year a town has grown 
to house the thousands of women employees who 
came to work in answer to the national appeal for 
their help. Miss Cotterell engaged and took to 



12 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

Gretna the first fifty fisher-girls from the Aberdeen 
coast. " I had one assistant in those days," Miss 
Cotterell recalls, " and we met the new-comers at the 
countryside station and took them over the fields 
to the hostel and the bungalow which had been 
furnished for their use. It was well they came first 
in the summer days, for there were then no proper 
roads, no lights, no shops, no halls or clubrooms, 
while at the factory the canteens were not ready for 
use. However, it was warm and sunny, and there 
were flowers and the birds sang. The girls carried 
sandwich lunches with them, had a good meat meal 
on returning to the hostel, and a pleasant country 
walk in the evening." 

To-day there are 64 hostels and 30 bungalows at 
Gretna, and Miss Cotterell has an army of assistants, 
clerks, matrons, and factory supervisors. The former 
wilderness is now inhabited by a well-housed com- 
munity, organised in all details with a thoroughness 
and practical care which speak volumes for the genius 
of its moving spirit. 

When the workers came to inhabit the convenient 
and attractive homes prepared for them, they found 
that equally enlightened plans had been formulated 
for their welfare. Miss Cotterell has kept careful 
watch of the leisure hours of those under her charge, 
and she has seen that every opportunity for rest, 
recreation, and improvement is open to them, and 
facilities for reading, writing, playing games, and 
attending classes. Periodic entertainments are given 
— sometimes by the " Gretna Ramblers," a troupe 
of munition girls who have been trained in singing, 
dancing, and recitation. 

The added responsibility of having the girls entirely 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 13 

resident, as at Gretna, entails serious problems. The 
whole work of catering, and the domestic arrange- 
ments of the hostels fall on the Welfare Department. 
Another of its duties is to file the record of every 
girl in the factory ; and the procedure for discharges, 
leave of absence, transfers, or sick leave, all passes 
through this Department — a considerable task when, 
at the rate at which the factory is increasing, as 
many as 200 new girls arrive in one day. Inevitably, 
difficulties of administration are not unknown, even 
in a model community. There has been occasional 
shortage of furniture, dampness of new houses, or girl 
workers unaccustomed to discipline who decline to 
obey orders. But difficulties seem to vanish under 
Miss Cotterell's experienced touch. Her wise ad- 
ministration is already responsible for a marked im- 
provement, not only in health and physique, which 
good food, clean housing, and regular employment 
have brought to the workers. Her influence is also 
noticeable in a greater regard for truth, honesty, 
and duty. 

This outcome of women's munition work will mean 
much in the future developments of their industrial 
life. Women like Miss Barker and Miss Cotterell, in 
attempting a great achievement, have accomplished 
an immeasurable one. 



IV 

MISS C. E. MATHESON AND THE 
VILLAGE LAND WORKERS 

Early in 1915, when recruiting for the Army was 
beginning to draw men away from agriculture as 
from all other work, a first effort was made to 
substitute women for men on the land. Although 
she knew nothing of agriculture, or the management 
of live stock, and was unaccustomed to hard manual 
work, Miss Matheson determined to offer herself as 
one of the pioneers. Before the war she was known 
in a very different sphere, for as a promising authoress 
of the younger school she had already attracted wide 
popularity. On volunteering, Miss Matheson was 
sent for a four weeks' agricultural training course to 
a Farm Institute to learn to milk ; to make butter ; 
to harness and drive a team ; to clean, dress, and pre- 
pare land ; to plant and hoe ; to clean stables and cow- 
houses ; to feed cattle ; to disregard backaches, weari- 
ness and blistered hands ; and to live a new, hard life. 
After this breaking in, she went to a Wiltshire 
dairy-farmer who possessed forty to fifty cows in 
milk. He was prejudiced against women workers, 
and Miss Matheson's first day was not a happy one. 
Writing of it afterwards, she said : " I arrived on a 
Saturday. On Sunday morning I assisted with the 
milking, and found I was expected to milk at least 

14 




To face p. 15. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 15 

eight or ten animals. My four weeks' training had 
simply taught me how — there had been little time for 
practising new accomplishments. Consequently my 
employer told me he would not require me after the 
end of the week. This announcement was a shock, 
and exceedingly discouraging. However, I toiled 
through that week, and at the end of it was asked to 
stay. Soon I was milking from eight to fifteen cows 
twice a day ; had full charge of the churns and pails, 
took the milk to the station to meet the London 
train, looked after the poultry and helped on the 
land — harvesting, threshing, spreading manure, etc." 

Of course, such work meant rising at five, and by 
the time Miss Matheson returned from her evening 
drive to the station it was nearly seven, but the station 
drive was, she said, a pleasurable duty, " for the sight 
of the London train reminded me that I still lived in 
the world." 

Miss Matheson spent seven months on the Wilt- 
shire farm, and the farmer on her departure paid her 
the compliment of engaging three girls to assist him. 
She then went to the Prince of Wales's farm on the 
Duchy of Cornwall estate, where she is still working. 

This farm specialises in stock-breeding, and the 
herd is a large and valuable one. With cows to 
milk, calves to rear, bulls to groom arijl exercise, food 
to prepare, bedding to change, the work is perpetual, 
for there are only three workers to tend the animals, 
and people in charge of stock must work seven days 
a week. During the winter the cattle claim all the 
time and attention, but in the summer Miss Matheson 
manages to help on the land in addition. When 
autumn came, Miss Matheson's employers at the 
Duchy farm began to wonder if she would be able 



16 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

to stand the winter work, but she hastened unhesitat- 
ingly to reassure them. The work certainly needs 
pluck and endurance, both physical and mental. The 
handling of bulls, for instance, demands no small 
amount of nerve. " I have had one or two adventures 
with the bulls," wrote Miss Matheson to a friend, " and 
though I must confess I tremble at times, I manage 
to hold my own. Of course, I could get help if I asked 
for it, but I do dislike asking. It gives one such an 
only-a-girl sort of feeling, and then again I am always 
afraid to let anyone know that sometimes I am afraid." 
It is unnecessary to state the reasons which bring 
an educated woman voluntarily to take up such a 
hard and exacting life, not merely for a few weeks of 
summer, but month after month. Only a deeply- 
rooted motive can be the impelling force, and there 
can be no finer form of patriotism than the unsensa- 
tional performance of these strenuous tasks, far from 
the glamour and excitement of direct contact with the 
war. Not only in the fruits of her own labour, but by 
the force of her example, as one of the pioneers along 
a new road for women, Miss Matheson is performing 
as fine a war service as any Englishwoman to-day. 

Just as the educated women have made an inspir- 
ing response to the call of the country in taking up 
agricultural work, so also have the women of the 
villages. In many country districts they have always 
been accustomed to work on the land, but to-day 
thousands who never worked before have come 
forward to give the most concrete proof of their 
patriotism. They are rightly proud to be entitled 
to wear the green Government armlet, given for 30 
days' work or 240 hours. 

The most recent development of women's land 




To face p. 17. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 17 

work is their employment on timber-felling and 
bark-stripping ; and though this is a completely new 
industry for women, and has not so far been taken 
up on a general scale, the results of the first experi- 
ments are full of promise. Timber work has been 
started in Devonshire under the energetic auspices of 
Miss Calmady Hamlyn, the inspecting officer for the 
Western District of England under the Board of 
Agriculture. An expert woodman instructor, after 
watching some of the novices at work, pronounced 
that in barking these women already excel men, and 
in tree-felling they will certainly equal them. 

Many of the village women whose husbands are 
serving have wisely taken up land work as being the 
best antidote to worry. From Devonshire comes 
the story of a soldier ordered to the front, who gave 
his wife the parting counsel : " My dear, you go up 
and work on that old field to-morrow ; it will help 
you more than anything." Mrs Hockin went, and 
worked indomitably at any job in all weathers, and 
is proud that she can earn a man's day- wage at piece- 
work. " Why I am a war worker is because I felt 
it was my duty to do my bit," Mrs Hockin writes. 
" I am a married woman with three children. My 
husband has joined the Army, and I have done 
my best to help my country. As I live in the 
country, there is nothing for me to do but to work 
on the land, which I have done for nearly two 
years. ... I have worked on the farm doing 
various kinds of work, such as weeding corn, hoeing 
turnips, spreading manure over the fields, turning 
up ground, picking in apples, wheeling away coke, 
helping in the harvest-fields, both hay and corn, and, 

by what our employers have told our instructor, we 

2 



18 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

have given them every satisfaction." Mrs Hockin 
has recently taken up the new timber- felling work, 
and is now leader of a gang of wood women. 
Though she is new to the work, Mrs Hockin is able 
to fell trees at the rate of thirty in half a day, and 
she states that she does not find the work unduly 
fatiguing, though " a bit windy." 

An agricultural demonstration by women, held 
recently in Surrey under the auspices of the Board 
of Agriculture, provided striking examples of the 
excellence of women's agricultural work. A hundred 
and twenty women took part, the majority of whom 
have started the work since the war. They entered 
for competitions in ploughing, harrowing, milking, 
management of calves and horses, hoeing corn, hand 
weeding, etc. In spite of the difficulties occasioned by 
bad weather, and having to work with strange animals 
under unfamiliar conditions, the women succeeded in 
making a deep impression on the farmers who came to 
watch their efforts. The sensation of the afternoon was 
caused in the milking competition, when the first prize 
was won by Miss M. Soutar, aged 10 J, who obtained 
a total of ninety-five points out of a possible hundred. 
Experimental demonstrations of this kind will do 
much to solve one of the greatest difficulties in the 
employment of women, namely, the conversion of 
the farmers ; but most of those who have given the 
women a chance have not had cause to regret it. 

When the farmers recognise the motive behind the 
women's work, and are willing not only to employ 
them but to treat them generously, it is certain that 
both farmers and women, working together under the 
same influence of patriotism, are bound to achieve 
results of which both may be proud. 





s> 



To J ace p. 19, 



V 
DR ELSIE INGLIS 

To Miss Inglis, M.B., CM., belongs the honour 
of originating the Scottish Women's Hospitals, one 
of the noblest efforts achieved by women in the war. 
As a medical woman, Dr Inglis, who qualified in 
1892, has specialised in surgery, and for many years 
she has held the posts of surgeon and gynaecologist 
to the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for 
Women and Children, and lecturer to the School of 
Medicine in Edinburgh. 

At the outbreak of war Dr Inglis felt that the 
medical services of women should be organised for 
the country, and she originated the idea of form- 
ing the Scottish Women's Hospital Units for war 
service, staffed entirely by women. The idea was 
carried out through the organisation of the Scottish 
Federation of Women Suffrage Societies. In the 
early months the War Office, though since converted, 
refused to accept women's hospitals, so Dr Inglis 
and her committee offered their services to the 
Allies. Their record of work is truly wonderful, and 
presents an outstanding example of women's industry 
and administrative ability. Hospitals have been 
established and maintained in France, Serbia, Corsica, 
Salonika, Rumania, and Russia, and the work has 
been entirely supported by the funds which the 

19 



20 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

organisation has raised, mainly through the branches 
of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies 
throughout Great Britain. 

Dr Inglis has been throughout the leading spirit, and 
has displayed extraordinary initiative. After spend- 
ing the first months of the war in starting the work 
at headquarters, she went to Serbia in 1915 to act 
as Commissioner to the Scottish Women's Hospitals 
established there. One unit on its way to Serbia was 
detained for a few weeks in Malta for service with the 
British wounded at a moment of medical shortage, 
and Lord Methuen, the Military Governor, wrote a 
glowing appreciation of their work. " They leave 
here," he wrote, "blessed by myself, surgeons, nurses, 
and patients alike, having proved themselves most 
capable and untiring workers." In Serbia the Scottish 
women were confronted with all the hardships and 
difficulties experienced by workers in that unfor- 
tunate country. Undaunted, however, they estab- 
lished their hospitals, heroically overcoming the 
problems of sanitation and supplies which beset them 
on all sides. The hospital at Kragujevatz, over which 
Dr Inglis had personal charge, was described by the 
military authorities as a picture of cleanliness, order, 
and comfort. 

When the time of the Serbian retreat came, the 
five hospitals in charge of the Scottish women fell 
back towards Albania. At Krushevatz Dr Inglis de- 
cided to remain with her staff to care for the Serbian 
wounded during the enemy occupation. Another 
unit under Dr Alice Hutchinson also stayed, and 
was taken prisoner ; while the remaining staffs accom- 
panied the retreating armies across the mountains. 

"These months at Krushevatz were a strange 




Bassano. 



DR ELSIE INGLIS. 



To face p. 21. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 21 

mixture of sorrow and happiness," Dr Inglis wrote 
afterwards. " There was a curious exhilaration in 
working for those grateful, patient men . . . yet 
the unhappiness in the Serbian houses and the 
physical wretchedness of those cold, hungry prisoners 
lay always like a dead weight on our spirits." 

By February 1916 the hospital was emptied and 
the staff sent as prisoners to Vienna. After endur- 
ing many discomforts, they were eventually released 
through the good offices of the American Embassy, 
and enabled to return to England, where their friends 
had heard no word of them during four months. 
When the veil was at last lifted, it showed Dr Inglis 
coming out of all the stress and suffering the first 
woman to wear the decoration of the White Eagle, 
given to her by the Serbian Government in recognition 
of her services. Other members of her unit received 
the Order of St Sava. " The Serbian nation," said 
the Crown Prince, "will never forget what these 
women have done." 

But not content with such services to Serbia, and 
with her courage still undaunted, Dr Inglis again set 
out in September 1916, at the head of a fresh unit, 
for service with the Serbian army fighting in South 
Russia. The unit, numbering seventy-six women, 
comprised a staff of women doctors, an X-ray operator, 
a dispenser, seventeen fully-trained nurses, sixteen 
orderlies, besides cooks and laundresses. The accom- 
panying transport column, under the Hon. Mrs 
Haverfield, consisted of eight ambulances, two kitchen 
cars, a repair car, four lorries, and three touring cars, 
with a large staff of women chauffeurs and cooks. 
The unit landed at Archangel and travelled across 
Russia to Odessa, where the workers met with a 



22 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

rousing reception. They then proceeded to join the 
Serbian division to which they were attached, in the 
Dobrudja, and another splendid chapter of Scottish 
Women's Hospital work was opened. A base 
hospital was started at Medjidia in Rumania, with 
a field station nearer to the front ; but after about a 
fortnight's work the inevitable evacuation was ordered 
before the Bulgarian advance, and the unit retreated 
with the army. Of this first hospital in Rumania 
Dr Inglis writes : " The day after the unit arrived 
at Medjidia, where the whole seventy-five were 
obliged to camp in one big room, wounded began to 
pour in and ambulances to ply between there and the 
firing line. There were no roads, just tracks across 
endless plains." Of the field station Dr Inglis says: 
" The destination was a place smoking from shells, 
and filled with a sense of destruction and desolation 
impossible to describe. The Scottish women set up 
a camp near by, and were attached to the Serbian 
Field Hospital. Aeroplanes bombed them daily, and 
on one occasion the ambulance suffered a heavy 
bombardment. When the orders came to move, the 
transport went through five appalling days of labour, 
which can be understood only by people who have 
done cross-country tracks in roadless countries . . . 
the scenes were indescribable — of confusion, terror, 
misery ; of blocks of carts, troops, pigs, women, chil- 
dren, lame horses, and exhausted animals of all sorts. 
The refugees were throwing out things to lighten their 
carts, and the Scottish women got out and picked 
them up to use for their own kitchen." 

Dr Inglis and the hospital party, on evacuating 
Medjidia, managed to secure what is known as a 
"sanitary train" — a long train of horse waggons, 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 23 

very different from an ambulance train, and they had 
to do their best for the crowd of wounded on board. 
Eventually Dr Inglis reached Braila, where she was 
able to render valuable help to a large number of 
Rumanian wounded, who were very short of medical 
assistance. Some members of the unit have since re- 
turned to England, but Dr Inglis is still in Rumania. 
She is temporarily working for the Russian army, 
pending the re-formation of the Serbian divisions, to 
which she will return. 

The General in command of the Russian Red Cross 
on the Rumanian front (Prince Dolgouroukoff) has 
conferred the medal of St George on all the members 
of the unit now at Reni who have worked under fire. 

" Wherever the odds against the Allies seem over- 
whelming, there one may be nearly sure of finding 
a unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals working 
for the wounded," writes an admirer of their work. 
" You do not find them in the well-equipped hospitals 
surrounded by every modern appliance, with crowds of 
men orderlies to carry out the heavy work, but rather 
in back-blocks of the war, as one may say, fighting 
a desperate battle of their own against dirt, disease, 
and wounds, and winning back precious lives of men 
whose language is in many cases unknown to them." 

Dr Elsie Inglis has that magnetic personality which 
can command efficiency, even with inadequate equip- 
ment and in hopeless environment. The inspiring 
work of this great woman doctor makes her indeed 
a worthy leader for those wonderful Scottish women, 
who are putting their whole soul into the work they 
have undertaken, without any thought of recompense, 
without vainglory, and without any other motive 
than the desire to help and heal. 



VI 

MISS HARRIET SPROT, 

THE MISSES PLAYFA1R, AND 

LADY BADEN-POWELL 

The Young Men's Christian Association com- 
menced work in the camps in France as soon as 
war began. For many years it had been accus- 
tomed to provide huts in the summer camps at home, 
but since the war the organisation has increased 
to such an extent that it now covers a vast field 
of enterprise. The Y.M.C.A. huts and those of 
the Church Army have proved the salvation of the 
men, who, when off duty, had nowhere to go, while 
in the camps the canteens provide an opportunity 
for them to buy small necessaries, tobacco, or any 
supplementary food in addition to their Army 
rations. The work of the ladies in the Y.M.C.A. 
huts in France is largely responsible for their great 
success. This work is arranged by a Committee 
under Princess Helena Victoria, with the Countess 
of Bessborough as hon. secretary, and it is owing to 
their insight and skilful organisation that it has been 
so successfully managed. 

The workers, whose service is entirely voluntary 
sign on for four months, pay all their own expenses 
— travelling, board, lodging, etc., — and provide their 
uniform — dark grey coats and skirts with blue 

24 




To face p. 25. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 25 

facings. Many of them have been living in France 
for over two years, in the simplest accommodation, 
devoid of all luxury, and devoting themselves en- 
tirely to the work. The best illustration of what 
they are doing can be taken from the experiences 
of a few typical workers. 

Miss Harriet Sprot manages a district which has 
its headquarters in a base town under the shadow 
of a great cathedral. Describing the average day of 
her workers, Miss Sprot says that their mornings till 
twelve o'clock are spent in preparation of the canteen 
counters, so that the quickest possible distribution 
of refreshments and other small purchases may be 
made to the soldiers in the short hours fixed by 
the camp authorities which they may spend at the 
hut. No money is taken over the counter — tickets 
have to be bought. "It is usual for the queue of 
men waiting to buy tickets to extend the whole 
length of the room. On a busy night it even 
stretches into the billiard - room and curls back 
half way up the main hut." Old Y.M.C.A. habitues 
know the arrangements so well that no time is 
wasted, but Miss Sprot reports that it takes double 
the time to serve a newly arrived draft, to whom 
the French money and its purchasing power are 
sources of bewilderment. The heaviest part of the 
work is always at night, but the men are unani- 
mously said to be so good-natured, patient, and 
orderly that, however dense the crowd, they all get 
served in time. When the hut closes, the workers 
may be justified in feeling that valuable work has 
been accomplished and the night's rest well earned. 

In every hut there is a small library counter where 
postcards are sold, notepaper is given out, books or 



26 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

games are lent, and games of billiards are arranged, 
a bell being rung every twenty minutes to mark the 
close of each game. Miss Sprot writes : " To sit down 
here is considered a rest, but one^ can have a busy 
time. . . . Private A. brings his watch and hopes 
it will not be too much trouble to get it mended for 
him. You take down his name, and hope the watch 
will not get mixed up with some half-dozen others 
passing through your hands, and that you will be 
able to get it back in time from the watchmaker 
before Private A. goes up the line. He himself has 
apparently no misgivings ; indeed, the implicit faith 
of himself and his fellows in one's unworthy self is 
something quite touching. Many questions are 
asked and answered. 1 have been consulted on 
religious matters and listened to innumerable family 
histories. The first move in a confidential talk comes 
when Tommy pulls out his pay-book and spreads 
before you the photos of his relatives. To most of 
us the hour spent each evening at this little counter 
is one to look forward to." 

Another worker is Miss Lilias Playfair, who, with 
a group of other ladies, went to a base town in 
France in February 1915. A canteen had been 
started in the only available place, a very small, in- 
convenient room ; but, even so, Miss Playfair reports 
that it was " packed every evening, and most of the 
day." Gradually the proper huts were built in the 
outlying camps and in the town, and there are now 
over ten huts, and two cinemas in this district, which 
Miss Playfair and her sister, Miss Audrey Playfair, 
manage in alternate spells. Describing her work, 
Miss Playfair says : " Besides serving at the canteens 
and helping with the arranging and ordering of food, 




Russell. 



LADY BADEN-POWELL. 



To face p. 27. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 27 

we do most of the entertainments. I have organised 
a small orchestra which plays at different huts, and 
last year we had a most successful Pierrot troupe. 
... We hope shortly to produce a 'revue,' and 
two or three short plays. French classes are held 
regularly, and the men are keen to learn. It is hard 
work, as our hours are long, but it is very interesting, 
and the men are so appreciative and say that they 
do not know how they could endure things without 
the Y.M.C.A." 

How much the Tommies themselves appreciate the 
presence of the Y.M.C.A. ladies may be seen in the 
following extract, written by a Tommy, describing 
what he calls a " heaven-sent organisation " : " When 
I entered the hut 1 was greeted with that glad smile 
of welcome which I shall always associate with the 
Y.M.C.A. by real English ladies— the first I had 
seen for over seven months, except the nurses, of 
course. I only wish to God that I could adequately 
describe my feelings, and I know mine were the same 
as thousands of my brothers-in-arms. It seemed to 
me that, amidst all the awful turmoil and din, with 
the horrors of the retreat and the first battle for 
Ypres imperishably photographed on my memory, 
I had found a haven of rest." Volumes could be 
written by the lady workers on the mingled humour 
and pathos in their interviews with the men. In a 
letter to a friend at home a worker says : " All the 
time out here life is so full of humour, if only one 
had the gift of describing it. At one moment one is 
doing something for a very correct General, and at 
the next one is in a hut having tea with a soldier, 
ex-greengrocer, quite charming, but the unmistakable 
type ! Everyone who interests the greengrocer has 



28 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

to sign their names in his Bible. Then one takes an 
Australian out shopping, and he tips one two francs 
for one's trouble ! " 

Quite apart from their ministrations to the men's 
material needs, the influence of the Y.M.C.A. ladies in 
France has been invaluable — cheering, encouraging, 
and helping the men in countless ways in their brief 
hours of leisure, and relieving by their presence the 
endless monotony of their life of discipline. 

Among the interesting features of the Y.M.C.A. 
work are the Scout Huts started by Lady Baden- 
Powell at two of the bases. The ladies who work 
in them are mostly Scout-masters and wear the Scout 
uniform, old Boy Scouts amongst the troops being 
their most keenly appreciative patrons. Lady Baden- 
Powell went to France in October 1915 to organise 
the work when the huts were built, and she worked 
for some months in the first two huts. In June 
1916 a Girl Guide Hut was built from funds earned 
by Girl Guides who, forbidden by their rules from 
collecting money, each did a day's work for the fund. 
Lady Baden-Powell is putting her energies into 
developing the Girl Guide movement on the same 
scale as the Boy Scouts. Realising the responsibilities 
of citizenship which the opportunities of the war have 
brought to the women of the country, the advantages 
are manifest of a voluntary training for girls, on the 
lines which have been so successful with boys, and 
the Girl Guide movement is a step to this end. 



.___ 




MISS AGNES BORTHWICK. 



Toface.p 29. 



VII 
MISS AGNES BORTHWICK 

No woman's work has more directly furthered the 
prosecution of the war than that of Miss Agnes 
Borthwick, who within one year has risen to the 
unique position — for a woman — of works manager 
in a great Munition Factory. 

When Miss Borthwick sees the trains laden with 
ammunition steaming out of the factory straight 
for Southampton, she must feel with justifiable pride 
that she and her 4000 girls are working for the 
country as vitally as the soldiers, who will fire the 
unceasing stream of shells which the girls are sending 
to them day by day. 

Miss Borthwick's rise to her present position of 
responsibility has been rapid, even judged by the 
standards of war promotion. She is of Scottish birth. 
A woman of high educational attainments, she took 
an honours M.A. degree in English at Glasgow 
University in 1912, and subsequently held a research 
scholarship at Bryn Mawr College, U.S.A. Miss 
Borthwick spent two years studying in America, and 
from Bryn Mawr went to Whittier Hall, University 
of Columbia, New York, and Barnard Hall, Radcliffe 
College, Cambridge, Mass. She also did some re- 
search work in Harvard Library. 

At the outbreak of war Miss Borthwick returned 

29 



30 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

to England, and in November 1915, when the newly 
formed Ministry of Munitions appealed for women 
workers, she volunteered, and went to Woolwich for 
a course of training in both the theoretical and 
practical work of shell and cartridge filling. At 
the end of five weeks she obtained a first-grade or 
" excellent " certificate. 

In January 1916 Miss Borthwick was sent to 
Georgetown-by- Paisley, where a new filling factory 
was in course of construction. Here she began work 
with only 24 girls. At first she and her workers 
scrubbed the shops, cleaned the newly built blocks 
of buildings, and unloaded the trucks of empty shells, 
which arrived at the factory ready to be filled with 
explosives. By the end of January the shops were 
sufficiently prepared for the real work to begin, and 
200 girls were taken on and instructed in filling. 
After that the factory grew rapidly. Every week 
from 30 to 50 girls were engaged, who started work 
in the new blocks, which were taken over from the 
builders as fast as they were finished. Two months 
later Miss Borthwick was promoted from forewoman 
to assistant works manager, and in May, on the 
promotion of the works manager, she took his place. 
By the end of 1916 the 24 original workers had 
increased to 4000 girls, and when an inspector came 
round to inquire into the question of labour dilution 
he was unable to eliminate a single man, for the only 
men employed in the factory were a few engineers 
and mechanical experts. 

Not only do the girls do all the filling of 18-pounder 
shells and cartridges of all sizes, but they also do 
the packing of the filled shells, and the trollying 
to the railway. The medical and nursing staff, the 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 31 

police patrol, the fire patrol, and the canteen workers 
are all women. Work never ceases night and day. 
The girls work in shifts of eight and three-quarter 
hours. 

There are now 130 shops, and the factory covers 
such a large acreage that its boundary is about five 
miles round. Above everything else, it must not be 
forgotten that the entire work of this factory is what 
is called "danger work." Although every possible 
precaution is taken for the safety and health of the 
workers, in all handling of powerful explosives the 
element of danger must be present. 

Miss Borthwick is only twenty-seven. She is a fresh- 
looking girl with a very quiet manner, suggesting a 
reserve of resolution and courage eminently necessary 
in her work. On her shoulders rests the heavy re- 
sponsibility for the successful working of the factory, 
and she has helped to develop it in an incredibly short 
time from a few huts to the throbbing hive of 
industry which it is to-day. Owing to her efficiency, 
and because she has never failed to make good what- 
ever she has undertaken, she has earned this great 
opportunity of service to the country. She talks of 
her work as calmly and naturally as if there were 
nothing remarkable about it. Yet she made this ad- 
mission while on a recent three days' leave : " Until 
I came away from the factory, I hadn't realised how 
heavy and how unending the responsibility is." 



VIII 

MRS ST CLAIR STOBART 

No woman has seen the war at closer quarters and in 
more varied fields of action than Mrs St Clair Stobart, 
and no one has worked harder to help the sick and 
wounded — on the field, in besieged fortresses, at base 
hospitals, and in the stricken villages of a ravaged 
and invaded country. Everywhere she has sought 
and found her opportunity to bear her part in the 
actual campaign — a part such as no woman has ever 
taken before. 

The outbreak of war found Mrs Stobart already 
trained, for she had gained her experience with the 
Women's Convoy Corps, which she founded, and 
which did such successful work in the Balkan War 
in 1912-1913. 

Early in August 1914, therefore, she was entrusted 
with the leadership of an ambulance unit, under the 
organisation of the St John Ambulance Association, 
and proceeded at once to Brussels. Before a hospital 
could be established, the Germans had entered the 
city, and Mrs Stobart escaped with difficulty, after 
having been actually a prisoner in German hands, 
and condemned to be shot as a spy. 

Nothing daunted by her first experience, Mrs 
Stobart then established a hospital in Antwerp. 
After three weeks of fine work the town was besieged, 

32 




MRS ST CLAIR STOBART. 



To face p. 32 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 33 

and the bombardment began. The hospital was in 
the direct line of fire of one of the enemy's objectives, 
the ammunition depot, but under a storm of shell- 
fire Mrs Stobart and her unit rescued their wounded, 
and were themselves the last to leave the burning 
city, crossing the bridge of boats just before it was 
blown up. 

After the fall of Antwerp Mrs Stobart accepted an 
invitation from the French Red Cross to establish a 
hospital at Cherbourg. 

At first the work was very heavy and the numbers 
of wounded enormous, but once it was started, Mrs 
Stobart was able to leave the smoothly working 
hospital in good hands, and to answer the call to help 
Serbia, then in such dire need. Accordingly, after 
spending some time in making her preparations, she 
travelled to Serbia in April 1915 with a fresh unit. 

On arrival Mrs Stobart began by establishing a camp 
hospital, entirely consisting of tents, at Kragujevatz. 

It was the first experiment of this kind which had 
been tried, but the advantages of healthy outdoor 
conditions, as opposed to the alternative of insanitary 
buildings, were soon proved, for the hospital, which 
had been requested by the Serbian medical authorities 
to undertake surgical work, entirely escaped the 
scourge of typhus. Unfortunately, this was not so 
with regard to typhoid, from which several members 
of the staff died in June 1915, including the well- 
known author, Mrs Percy Dearmer, who, though far 
from strong, had offered her services to the unit, and 
had already done fine work. 

During the first three months the hospital under- 
took both civil and military cases, and Mrs Stobart 
organised a further invaluable and successful scheme 

3 



34 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

in establishing roadside tent dispensaries in seven 
or eight remote villages. Altogether, within a few 
weeks, 22,000 civilians received surgical and medical 
assistance. 

At the end of September 1915 came a signal 
proof of the confidence which Mrs Stobart had 
inspired in Serbia. The army was preparing its 
fresh resistance to the second invasion, and the 
Bulgarians were on the eve of declaring war. Mrs 
Stobart was approached by the Serbian military 
authorities and asked to mobilise a portion of her 
unit as a flying field hospital. She was appointed 
commander, with the rank of major in the Serbian 
army (the first time in history that such an appoint- 
ment has been given to a woman), and the unit, 
which was called the First Serbian-English Field 
Hospital, was attached to the Schumadia division. 

After making arrangements for the continuation of 
the work of the Kragujevatz hospital, Mrs Stobart 
chose for the ambulance column a dozen of her 
English women doctors and nurses, motor ambulance 
drivers, a cook, orderlies, interpreters, and about 
sixty Serbian soldiers. On October 1 the column 
started for the Bulgarian front, travelling by train, 
through Nish, to Pirot. But, after a few days of 
trekking in that direction, the column was ordered to 
move north with the division to within a few miles of 
Belgrade on the Danube front, to face the stronger 
enemy, the Germans and the Austrians. On October 
14 the hospital camp was pitched within sound of 
the guns, and the first batches of wounded were 
received. But the stand of the Serbian army was 
destined to be a short one. Two days later, orders 
came to move southwards, and the first stage began 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 85 

of the great retreat, which was to continue steadily 
for three months. 

The life of the members of the field hospital dur- 
ing the retreat was indeed a strange one, for ever 
on the march, stopping for a few hours to pitch a 
camp and attend to the wounded brought to them 
from the battlefields close at hand, evacuating them 
by motor ambulance to the nearest railway or hospital, 
and then marching on again. Throughout the re- 
treat Mrs Stobart rode at the head of her column 
night and day, selecting every inch of their road, 
struggling for a place for them in the endless pro- 
cession of the straggling host that beset the mud- 
soddened roads and slippery mountain paths, obtaining 
food for them and their horses with infinite difficulty 
in the deserted villages through which the column 
passed. Forced to snatch odd hours of sleep when 
and where they could, always fully dressed, and 
prepared for the orders to march at any moment, they 
often narrowly escaped capture. The sound of the 
enemy guns was ever in their ears, the invading 
armies always at their heels. Mrs Stobart truly 
proved herself a leader in fact as well as in name, for 
no trained commander of troops could have shown 
a higher courage or faced emergencies with a more 
decided energy than this Englishwoman. 

It was a cruel day for the hospital column when, at 
the end of a terrible forced march, during which Mrs 
Stobart was eighty-one hours in the saddle, the motor 
ambulance and the hospital equipment had at last 
to be destroyed and abandoned at the foot of the 
Montenegrin mountains, through which Mrs Stobart 
then led her skeleton column on foot. The horrors 
of the retreat increased every day, but the only way 



36 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

to safety had to be faced, though it lay over trackless 
mountains 8000 feet high, through snow, ice, un- 
broken forests, and bridgeless rivers. It was then 
mid-winter. Men and animals died by the roadside in 
hundreds from starvation and exposure. Writing of 
the retreat afterwards, Mrs Stobart said : " Continued 
cold, exhaustion from forced marches, and increasing 
lack of food made the track a shambles . . . men by 
the hundred lay dead, dead from cold and hunger, by 
the roadside, and no one could stop to bury them. 
But worse still, men lay dying by the roadside, dying 
from cold and hunger, and no one could stay to tend 
them. The whole scene was a combination of mental 
and physical misery, difficult to describe in words. 
No one knows, nor ever will know accurately, how 
many people perished, but it is believed that not less 
than 10,000 human beings lie sepulchred in those 
mountains." 

At last, on December 20, Mrs Stobart had the 
triumph of leading her weary but courageous column 
into Scutari in Albania, without the loss of a single 
one of its members — the only commander who 
succeeded in bringing a column intact through the 
retreat. 

The chief officer of the Serbian medical staff 
expressed true sentiments when he wrote to Mrs 
Stobart : " You have made everybody believe that a 
woman can overcome and endure all the war difficul- 
ties . . . you can be sure, esteemed Madam, that you 
have won the sympathies of the whole of Serbia." 




MISS DOROTHY RAVENSCROFT. 



To face p. 37. 



IX 

MISS E. G. BATHER AND MISS 
DOROTHY RAVENSCROFT 

Miss Bather is one of the women whose sporting 
experiences in pre-war days have been turned to 
valuable account in the service of her country. Her 
knowledge of horses, gained in the enjoyment of 
hunting, has enabled her to undertake the serious 
and arduous work of running a Remount Depot for 
the War Office under Mr Cecil Aldin, M.F.H. 

Many girls who have hunted, or had their own 
horses, might think that they could easily do 
remount work; but it is not merely a case of 
being able to ride well, the riding is only the 
lightest part of the duties : it is a matter of settling 
down to a life of real hard work, requiring strength, 
courage, infinite patience and firmness. That Miss 
Bather has been able to organise a depot success- 
fully, and carry on the work entirely with the help 
of girl workers for over two years, is a tribute to 
any woman which can only be realised if the exact 
scope of the work is understood. 

The functions of workers at remount depots are 
to receive horses and mules which are sent to them, 
and to make them fit for active service. The animals 
arrive mostly in rough condition — the horses being 
of all types, from the heavy draught-horse to the 

37 



38 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

colonel's charger. An expert has said: "To be 
able to do this work, a girl must love her horse for 
himself; but that is not everything — she must be 
practical, capable, strong, self-denying, and brave." 

The horses are usually sent to the depot in mixed 
batches of thirty or more, dirty in their coats, per- 
haps thin and out of condition, and often lame or 
suffering from various ailments. 

" It requires quite a lot of pluck in the first 
instance," writes Miss Bather, " to unload from the 
railway trucks, saddle up, and mount those horses 
that look as if they had been ridden lately, and 
ride them, each rider leading another horse, to their 
destination some five miles away." 

The grooming of the horses is hard work and 
requires considerable strength, even when the horse 
is quiet ; with wild and difficult horses it is necessary 
to hobble and muzzle them before grooming is pos- 
sible. They are often deceptively quiet at first, and 
it may take a few days of bitter experience before 
the kickers and biters are discovered ! Besides the 
daily grooming, which has to be performed for 
each horse like a child's toilet, there is the clipping 
and singeing. After the grooming comes the work 
of keeping the stables, which must be cleaned 
out and disinfected daily ; while the harness and 
"tackle" have to be cleaned and polished. There 
is also the care of the horses in sickness and 
convalescence, which requires particular skill and 
knowledge. 

With regard to the exercising, Miss Bather writes : 
" This is fraught with difficulties and anxieties, 
especially with a new lot of horses. To set the 
pace someone responsible has to lead the string 




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To face p. 39. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 39 

with the quiet horses that will face the traffic ; but 
though all army horses are supposed to be broken 
in, I have known our string resemble a Wild West 
Show ! " 

An eyewitness described an occasion when she 
happened to meet Miss Bather's -" lads " out for 
exercising. One of the horses had taken fright, 
and, breaking loose, had become entangled in barbed 
wire near the road. The onlooker states that the 
girls behaved with the utmost coolness, extricating 
the struggling horse with courage and skill, and 
successfully preventing a stampede among the 
other horses. 

During the first year of her work about 500 horses 
passed through Miss Bather's depot, and in June 
1917 she completed her second year of work. 

Miss Dorothy Ravenscroft is another lady who 
has been doing similar work for the War Office. 

She is responsible for a remount depot at Chester, 
where, with the help of twelve girl assistants, forty 
horses at a time are prepared for active service. 
The horses here are mostly officers' cobs and chargers, 
and, as at the other depots, the girl workers do the 
entire work of the stables, as well as the exercising, 
grooming, and feeding of the horses. 

The post of superintendent of a Remount Depot 
is one of considerable responsibility, for the success 
of a depot depends largely upon the personality of 
the responsible head. Her life is necessarily one of 
continual anxiety, not only for the horses, but for 
her girl workers, who need to be chosen carefully ; 
the work is far too great a strain physically and 
mentally for girls under twenty. Writing to a friend 
recently, a superintendent said with truth : " One's 



40 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

nerves need to be made of iron ; I am wondering 
how much longer mine will stand the strain." 

This is a question that women must be asking 
themselves in almost every branch of war work 
to-day, for all work just now is at high pressure. 
But the women at home are inspired with the same 
spirit as the men in the trenches, and are equally 
prepared to go on until they drop. 







To face p. 41. 



X 

MISS EDITH STONEY 
AND DR FLORENCE STONEY 

Miss Edith Stoney and her sister, Dr Florence 
Stoney, are specialists in X-ray work, and in this 
vitally important branch of surgery they have both 
rendered fine service throughout the war. 

Dr Stoney was head of the electrical department 
in the New Hospital for Women, London. Early 
in the war she went to Antwerp in Mrs St Clair 
Stobart's unit as head of the medical staff and in 
charge of the X-ray department. After the fall of 
Antwerp, when the hospital staff made their escape 
in London motor-buses only twenty minutes before 
the bridge of boats was blown up, the unit was 
re-established in a hospital at Cherbourg under the 
French Croix Rouge. The X-ray work was of 
course invaluable, and in giving an account of it 
Dr Stoney wrote : 

" Most of our cases were septic fractures, for nearly 
all were septic by the time they reached us, four to 
eight days generally after being wounded, and most 
of the fractures were badly comminuted as well. The 
X-rays were much in request to show the exact con- 
dition of the part and the position of the fragments. 
In all cases the pieces of the shell had to be accurately 
located, and were then as a rule easily extracted." 

4.1 



42 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

With constant practice it became possible for 
Dr Stoney to tell by X-rays which were the dead 
pieces of bone in a comminuted facture, for observa- 
tion showed that they threw a denser shadow than 
living bone. " One piece of dead bone three inches 
long was diagnosed first by X-rays," Dr Stoney 
reports, "and the early removal of these pieces 
greatly hastens recovery." 

When the hospital was inspected by the consulting 
surgeon for the district, his first inclination was to 
regard a hospital staffed by women as hardly worthy 
of inspection ; but after going through the wards 
he wrote : 

" L'hopital de Tourlaville est tres bien organise', les 
maiades sont tres bien soign^s, et les chirurgiennes 
sont de valeur egale aux chirurgiens les meilleurs." 

When the British army took over the northern part 
of the line in France, hospital arrangements were 
altered. The need for the Cherbourg hospital was 
over, as all British movable cases were taken to Eng- 
land; and therefore in the spring of 1915 the hospital 
was closed. Dr Stoney returned to England, and 
offered her services to the War Office, and in April 
1915 she was asked to take over the X-ray depart- 
ment in the Fulham Military Hospital, a hospital of 
over 1000 beds, where she is still working. 

Dr Stoney took up this work about a fortnight 
before the opening of the Endell Street Hospital 
under Dr Garrett Anderson ; she is therefore the 
first woman doctor to work under the War Office in 
England. Dr Stoney not only undertakes the photo- 
graphic branch of the X-ray work, but she diagnoses 
and reports on the cases from the photographs. An- 
other branch of her work is to use X-rays actually 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 43 

during operations for those surgeons who prefer 
to operate in this way. She also started a small 
department for X-ray treatment, which has proved 
beneficial in certain nerve and goitre cases. 

Dr Stoney recently reported that considerably 
over 5000 cases had passed through her hands since 
she came to this hospital. She has a staff of V.A.D. 
assistants, two of whom she has trained in the work 
sufficiently to enable them to take over X-ray in- 
stallations. One is now working in Rumania, and 
the other in London. Dr Stoney's splendid work 
has completely overcome any prejudice which may 
have attached to her as a woman when she first 
took up her post. Although she is the only woman 
doctor in the hospital, she works on an equal 
footing with the men, except that she holds no 
military rank. 

Miss Edith Stoney is a woman of great university 
distinction, having been wrangler in the Mathemati- 
cal Tripos at Cambridge. She was an Associate 
of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Lecturer in 
Physics to the London University. Astronomy is 
another subject on which she has lectured, and while 
at Newnham College she had charge of the telescope. 
She has also done valuable original work in relation 
to searchlights. 

At the beginning of the war Miss Stoney joined 
the committee of the Women's Imperial Service 
League, and helped in the organisation of the hospital 
unit with which her sister went to Antwerp, fitting 
up the portable X-ray apparatus, which was subse- 
quently of such great service. After the transfer of 
the hospital to Cherbourg she continued to assist in 
the organisation of its supplies. Her real war work, 



44 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

however, may be said to have begun when she retired 
from her work as Lecturer in Physics in the spring 
of 1915 and joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals. 

Miss Stoney first took up work at the tent hospital 
at Troyes, where she put up and ran the X-ray de- 
partment, giving invaluable assistance to the surgeons 
by the accurate localisation of foreign bodies in 
wounds. The head surgeon, Dr Louise M'llroy, 
stated that she never failed to find a projectile 
searched for. This was indeed a tribute to the 
accurate localisation in the X-ray department. An- 
other valuable branch of Miss Stoney's work was the 
taking of stereoscopic skiagrams. Miss Stoney took 
one of the very early skiagrams of gas bubbles in the 
tissues, due to gas gangrene, a development which 
has since come into great prominence. 

In the autumn of 1915 Miss Stoney accompanied 
the hospital unit from Troyes when it was ordered to 
Serbia by the French authorities. Before leaving for 
Serbia she had the foresight to equip herself in Paris 
with a portable engine, as she was determined that 
her department should be efficient. On the com- 
mittee refusing to sanction the expense, she bought 
it herself. Miss Stoney's action was soon justified, 
for when the hospital was installed at Gevgheli in 
Serbia there was no electric supply. Thanks to her 
engine, not only was this the only British hospital 
able to work X-rays, but incidentally, as a by-product 
of the X-ray department, Miss Stoney lighted the 
entire hospital with electricity. The need of much 
electric light in the dark winter days meant hard 
work for Miss Stoney, and the following extract 
from a letter conjures up a picture of work in no 
easy conditions : 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 45 

"The electric light was needed in the pharmacy 
until the doctors had finished, and it was often late 
before I could stop the little engine and pack it up 
warm for the night. . . . When I creaked up the 
ladders in stockinged feet to the loft where fifty-four 
of us slept, there could be no thought of washing, 
with ice already in the jug ; it was often an inch and 
a half thick by morning. Instead of undressing, one 
piled on every scrap of extra clothes one had, and 
put one's waterproof under the mattress to stop the 
draught up through it." 

When the French retreated from Gevgheli, a site 
was found for the hospital just outside Salonika, on a 
bit of ill-drained, marshy ground. There again the 
engine proved invaluable. From January 1916 on- 
wards Miss Stoney has run the X-ray department, 
doing, besides her own work, many radiograms for 
British and French doctors from other hospitals, who 
referred their cases to her for examination. 

At Salonika Miss Stoney again lit the hospital 
with electric light. For several months she was 
obliged to attend to the engine entirely alone, owing 
to the illness of the only mechanic. She further set 
up treatment by high frequency for the patients, and 
radiant heat baths with vibratory massage. Having 
previously studied the Zander treatment, Miss Stoney 
was able to instal an apparatus, which, though she 
describes it as rough, was very successful in treating 
stiff joints requiring movement. She also used ioni- 
sation for healing wounds with beneficial results. 

In all these ways Miss Stoney has been able to 
bring her knowledge of physics to the service of 
the wounded. She has been a pioneer in her work 
in this physical department which she has originated 



46 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

and developed at Salonika. " It is easy to work 
X-rays," she writes, " when someone else has in- 
stalled them ; but in a moving hospital, in difficult 
circumstances, physics is a help in getting the 
apparatus up and working well. We put in order 
the X-ray outfits of two British hospital ships calling 
at Salonika. The doctors and mechanics on board 
had not just the needed physics, but could work the 
apparatus perfectly well when it was installed." 

The Serbian Government has decorated Miss 
Stoney with the Order of St Sava in recognition of 
her services. But the reward of her fine work lies 
in the gratitude of the scores of her patients who 
owe their renewed health largely to her indomitable 
energy, and the wonderful ingenuity and resource 
with which in conditions of abnormal difficulty she 
has brought so many projects to a successful and 
practical issue. Writing of her work lately, Miss 
Stoney says : " There is always sadness, but there 
is endless variety and interest in the life, and one 
trusts that the great privilege of easing a drop in 
the vast ocean of pain, so bravely borne, may have 
been ours." 




Chandler. 

BARONESS DE T'SERCLAES AND MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM. 

To face />. 47. 



XI 

THE BARONESS DE T'SERCLAES AND 
MISS MA1RI CHISHOLM 

Of all the splendid stories of the war there is none 
that catches the imagination more than that of the 
work of Baroness de T'Serclaes (Mrs Knocker, as 
she was in the early days of the war) and Miss Mairi 
Chisholm. It is an unparalleled achievement that 
these two young women should have been living 
actually up in the firing line ever since the beginning 
of the war, tending and caring for the Belgian soldiers, 
dressing and nursing the wounded, and helping the 
men in the trenches by taking food and hot drinks 
to them day by day even at the very outposts. 

Mrs Knocker and Miss Chisholm (who was then 
only eighteen) first went to Belgium in September 
1914 as members of Dr Munro's Ambulance Corps, 
and started ambulance work in Ghent and Furnes. 
From the first their skill and courage were put to the 
highest test, and it would be hard to imagine greater 
bravery and devotion than they showed, for instance, 
in the fierce fighting at Dixmude in October 1914. 
Mrs Knocker, who is an expert motor-driver, drove 
an ambulance car to and fro on the road between 
Dixmude and Furnes under such heavy shell fire that 
men broke down and were unable to continue driving 
under the strain of the terrible ordeal. On one occa- 

47 



48 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

sion the ambulance was required to take some German 
prisoners as passengers, and, with no other guard but 
Miss Chisholm, Mrs Knocker drove her convoy along 
the shell-torn road. " I think it was the proudest 
moment of my life," she wrote in her diary. 

But the work for which their names will live began 
in November 1914, when the two severed their con- 
nection with the Ambulance Corps and started to 
work together in a little cellar in the ruined village 
of Pervyse. Mrs Knocker was led to take this step 
by her conviction, shared by the Belgian doctors, of 
the necessity of establishing an advanced dressing- 
post where the severely wounded men might have 
time to recover from shock before enduring the 
jolting journey to hospital, which had already proved 
fatal to many. 

Thus it was that these women — the eldest little 
more than a girl — took up their work. Through all 
these long months up to the present day they have 
been living the lives of the soldiers themselves — their 
quarters for the most part a tiny cellar, again and 
again under shell fire, sometimes suffering fierce 
bombardments, not taking off their clothes literally 
for weeks on end, eating anything they could get, 
and enduring the trials of cold, dirt, exhaustion, and 
danger with a gaiety and a courage which have been 
at once an inspiration and a source of astonishment 
to those who have been privileged to see them at 
Pervyse. When the cellar was demolished they 
moved to another tumble-down cottage, only to 
be shelled out twice more. But wherever they 
established themselves it became "home" to the 
soldiers — their presence bringing a ray of comfort 
and brightness into the stern routine of life in 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 49 

the trenches. When in March 1915 a decree was 
passed by the commanders of the Allied armies in 
Paris forbidding the presence of any women in the 
firing line, at the request of the Belgian authorities 
an exception was made for these two, mentioned by 
name, who were then officially attached to the Third 
Division of the Belgian army in the field. 

No honour in the war has been better earned than 
the decoration which King Albert bestowed on each 
of them, when he appointed them Chevaliers of the 
Order of Leopold. As if to crown their wonderful 
story, romance came to one of them in the midst 
of that shot-torn village. The young widow, Mrs 
Knocker, recently became the wife of a Belgian 
officer, Baron Harold de T'Serclaes. 



XII 

LADY MARY HAMILTON, MISS STELLA 
DRUMMOND, AND THE SKILLED 
WOMEN MUNITION WORKERS 

It is admitted on all sides that the output of 
munitions achieved by Great Britain since the spring 
of 1915 has been little less than miraculous, and this 
result is all the more astonishing when it is recalled 
that at least 25 per cent, of the men who were 
engaged in the chemical and engineering trades at 
the outbreak of hostilities have joined the Army. 
It was thus essential not only to fill the gaps, but 
also to augment the supply of available labour, in 
answer to the increased demand. The women of 
the Empire at once responded to the appeal for their 
help. A new and unsuspected reservoir of labour 
was thus discovered, without which, in the words of 
Mr F. G. Kellaway, M.P. (Parliamentary Secretary 
to the Minister of Munitions), " the Germans would 
by now have won the war." The extent of the help 
rendered by women may perhaps be best realised by 
the fact that there are over 700,000 women engaged 
in munition work, employed on processes which 
cover practically the whole engineering and chemical 
trades. Under the general term " munition work " 
are included varied forms of work, both skilled and 
unskilled, undertaken by women, from the heavy 

50 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 51 

manual labour of loading and unloading trucks of 
ammunition, to the most intricate and delicate of 
engineering and electrical operations. To mention 
only a few of these highly skilled operations, women 
are building a great part of one of the best high- 
speed engines in the country, each woman setting 
her own tools, work which requires considerable 
technical skill. In the construction of chassis for 
heavy army lorries and in marine-engine building 
women are undertaking more and more responsible 
work. In the delicate work of constructing aero- 
engines they are turning on centre lathes to a half 
of a thousandth of an inch. Women are boring and 
rifling the barrel of the service rifle : they undertake the 
hydraulic riveting of boilers : they work the electric 
overhead travelling cranes for moving the enormous 
boilers of our men-of-war : they are employed exten- 
sively on turbine work. " So wide is the scope of 
women's capabilities," Mr Kellaway stated recently, 
"that a prominent engineer has expressed his con- 
viction that, given two more years of war, he would 
undertake to build a battleship from keel to aerial 
in all its complex detail, entirely by women's labour." 
And again : " To watch young girls hard at work for 
twelve hours a day, working on shells, lubricating 
bullets, handling cordite, making, inspecting, and 
gauging fuses, examining work where the thousandth 
part of an inch is a vital matter, running their 
machines deftly and easily, and spending their days 
in the danger buildings among explosives with as 
little fuss as if they were knitting socks, brings a 
realisation of that which lies behind the list of opera- 
tions on which women are engaged to-day." 

Women's skill on complicated processes has been 



52 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

acquired with a rapidity which has caused astonish- 
ment to experts. Before the war an apprenticeship 
of five or six years was considered necessary amongst 
Trades Unions for gaining mastery of some of the 
processes which women have learnt in a few months 
or even weeks. In measuring their achievement, 
however, it must never be forgotten what a debt is 
owed to British organised labour, which surrendered 
up in the hour of national crisis many of the legal 
rights and privileges established only after years of 
effort and controversy. 

The women munition workers of to-day have come 
from all ranks of society, from every corner of the 
Empire, many of them entirely unaccustomed to in- 
dustrial life or manual work, and many unacquainted 
even with life in England. An incident in one muni- 
tions works may be recalled as typical of the rest. 
Working side by side recently on the machines in 
a certain factory were a soldier's wife from a city 
tenement, a vigorous daughter of the Empire from a 
lonely Rhodesian farm, a graduate from Girton, and a 
scion of one of the old aristocratic families of England. 
War has indeed proved a powerful solvent of social 
barriers, and one of the distinctive features of factory 
life in munition areas is the excellent leadership of 
the educated women who have entered the works. 
Typical of this class of munition workers are Lady 
Mary Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, 
and Miss Stella Drummond, daughter of General 
Drummond. These two friends, girls in years but 
soldiers in spirit, determined in the early stages of 
the war to serve their country by making munitions. 
Accordingly they applied for work as ordinary 
" hands " in a munition factory, and for some six 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 53 

months were employed on repetition work in a shell 
factory. Lady Mary Hamilton has stated that she 
and Miss Drummond mastered the processes on which 
they were engaged in a few weeks, but admitted 
that a victory over the prejudices of the factory 
employees, inclined to resent the introduction of 
" swells," was a lengthier task. Soon the skill of 
the two friends attracted the attention of those 
in authority, and they were selected for training in 
more advanced work. They were admitted into the 
factory school for skilled work, and after five weeks 
of this training they proceeded to the Government 
school at Brixton, London. There they followed 
a nine weeks' course in such advanced work as tool- 
making and tool-setting — tasks which would not 
have been considered possible for women workers in 
pre-war days. 

After successfully completing their training, Lady 
Mary Hamilton and Miss Drummond were allocated 
to a factory, where they were eventually placed in 
charge of eight machines each — Wells Turret Capstan 
lathes. They were then entirely responsible for the 
output of their machines, which involved responsibility 
for the workers employed on them. In this " shop " 
both boys and girls were employed, and the new 
charge-hands or tool-setters had to "make good" 
with the mixed staff. They were entirely successful, 
not only in the setting of the five or six requisite 
tools in each machine and in the making and grind- 
ing of their own tools, but in producing an output 
which was accurate to within a 200th part of a 
millimetre. So popular were they as leaders of 
their staff, that when Lady Mary Hamilton recently 
resigned her post before her marriage, and Miss 



54 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

Drummond's services were transferred to welfare 
supervision under the Ministry of Munitions, the 
regret expressed by the employees showed that they 
were losing comrades as well as officers. 

There are also countless instances of uneducated 
women who have found themselves equal to technical 
work of considerable responsibility. For example, in 
one factory a woman driver works a 900-h.p. Willans 
plant. She starts the engine herself if required, 
watches the voltmeter and regulates the governor 
accordingly, wipes the commutators and regulates 
the brushes. This woman was formerly a kitchen- 
maid, and had no technical experience whatever. 
Another working woman recently lost the first finger 
and thumb of her left hand, owing to a loaded gaigne 
jamming in the press. After an absence of six weeks 
she returned to work, and is to-day back on the same 
work and getting an even greater output than before. 
Public recognition is due to the great army of women 
munition workers for their courage and endurance, 
both in the way in which they are facing the dangers 
incidental to some of their occupations and the 
monotony entailed in the regular performance of 
others. 




Swaine. 



LADY PERROTT. 



To face p.' SS- 



XIII 

MRS FURSE, G.B.E., R.R.C, 
LADY PERROTT, R.R.C, AND THE 
VOLUNTARY AID DETACHMENT 

Throughout the war the services of the Joint 
Societies of the British Red Cross and the Order of 
St John have covered a vast area of work for the 
sick and wounded. 

One of the most vital branches of the work has 
been that of the great army of untrained or part- 
trained women, who have been supplementing the 
limited number of trained nurses in the hospitals 
at home and abroad. Sir Alfred Keogh, the 
Director General of the Army Medical Service, has 
explained the scope of their work when describing 
the organisation of the Territorial Army nursing 
system. He says : " It was necessary to arrange 
for the dilution of the nursing services by women 
who had received some special training, though of 
elementary character, to afford assistance to the more 
highly trained nurses. This had been foreseen, for 
at the time of the formation of the Territorial Army, 
the training of the civil population to this extent was 
taken in hand, and voluntary detachments of women 
in possession of elementary certificates, but receiving 
continuous training, were formed in the country. 

55 



56 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

Thus at the outbreak of war there were some 60,000 
women in England who had received this training." 

For a long period of years the St John Ambu- 
lance Association, under the ancient order of St John 
of Jerusalem, had already controlled a large organi- 
sation of ambulance and nursing divisions, and may 
claim to have originated the teaching of first aid, 
which has now become the basis of all Voluntary 
Aid Detachment training. When the scheme was 
started, detachments were formed throughout the 
country, in answer to Queen Alexandra's appeal, by 
the British Red Cross Society, the great new organi- 
sation inaugurated by King Edward VII. in July 
1905, and also by the Order of St John. Many of the 
old-established St John Nursing Divisions enrolled 
at once as Voluntary Aid Detachments, their com- 
position being similar. Shortly after the outbreak of 
war, the British Red Cross Society and the Order of 
St John decided to amalgamate their organisation 
and finances for the period of the war. 

The administration of the Voluntary Aid Detach- 
ments throughout the country is largely local. Each 
county has its own system under the central offices 
in London, and the work of the women, from the 
county presidents to the humblest workers, has been 
one of the proudest records of the war. Some Volun- 
tary Aid Detachments have been mobilised in their 
entirety for service in the auxiliary military hospitals, 
many of which have been almost entirely staffed 
and financed by individual detachments. Others are 
posting their members separately for hospital work 
elsewhere. 

The work of the V.A.D. members besides nursing, 
includes cooking, storekeeping, and secretarial work, 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 57 

which are classed under the heading of General Service. 
This is the branch of work for which Mrs Charles W. 
Furse, as Commandant-in-Chief of the V.A.Ds. of the 
Joint Societies, is now responsible. The posting of 
the V.A.D. nurses to hospitals at home and abroad 
also goes through her hands. Widow of the well- 
known painter, and daughter of John Addington 
Symonds, Mrs Furse was for several years before the 
war one of the most interested and prominent of 
V.A.D. workers. When Sir Alfred Keogh's scheme 
for the organisation of voluntary Red Cross workers 
came into being in 1909, Mrs Furse was one of the 
first women to enrol. In 1912 she became Com- 
mandant of the first Paddington Detachment, London 
128. During the next two years she encouraged 
enterprise among the members by organising classes 
in cooking, laundry, and hygiene, in addition to the 
study of first aid and home nursing. By this time 
Mrs Furse had become a member of several com- 
mittees dealing with Red Cross and V.A.D. work, 
and was already recognised as an authority on these 
subjects. On the outbreak of war her services were 
at once commandeered by the British Red Cross 
Society. 

For the first months of war Mrs Furse undertook 
the management of the Enquiry Department at 
Devonshire House, which became the headquarters 
of the V.A.D. In September 1914 she submitted a 
scheme to the War Office for V.A.D. rest stations 
on the lines of communication. In October she was 
ordered to go to France with sufficient members 
from her own detachment to start this work, 
which has been much extended, and has met a 
great need 



58 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

In January 1915 Mrs Furse was recalled from 
France, where the rest-station work was now 
established, to form a department for the co-ordina- 
tion of V.A.D. work, and to organise a continual 
supply of probationers for the military and other 
hospitals. A selection board was formed at Devon- 
shire House to deal with all applications of V. A.Ds. 
for service at home or abroad. Mrs Furse's duties 
also involve periodical inspections in France, where 
the work has been splendidly carried on by Miss 
Rachel Crowdy, the Principal Commandant in 
France. After one of her recent tours of inspection, 
Mrs Furse reported: "The work of the V.A.D. 
members in France is a credit to the women of the 
Empire. Wherever I went I found the same anxiety 
to keep up the very high standard of work and 
behaviour set by the organisation. . . . No job is 
too small for the V.A.D. members, and they good- 
humouredly fill any gap which appears. The rules 
and regulations are very strict, and there is but little 
entertainment. The work is under war conditions, 
and the members try to show that they can wait till 
the end of the war for their play-time. Undoubtedly 
the V.A.D. organisation is proving that women can 
be trusted in the zone of the armies, and that they 
have realised the meaning of discipline and appreciate 
the necessity of discretion." 

Many girls who went to France early in the war 
as practically untrained workers now hold splendid 
records of service in hospital, and have risen to 
positions of considerable responsibility. In measur- 
ing the scope of what they have accomplished, it 
must not be forgotten that V.A.D. members are 
drawn from very varied social positions, a large 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 59 

proportion being women accustomed to lives of 
luxury and ease, to whom the hard and often 
unattractive work has been a new and difficult 
experience. 

Mrs Furse's great foresight into future needs during 
the earlier stages of the war, the untiring energy and 
patience with which she prepared for the time when 
these needs should be recognised, and, above all, her 
immense personal influence, have proved her to be 
one of the real leaders whom the war has brought to 
light. It is largely through her fine personal example 
of the spirit in which all work should be done that 
the V.A.Ds. have won for themselves such a good 
name for keenness and discipline. 

Lady Perrott, the Lady Superintendent-in-Chief 
of the St John Ambulance Brigade, is another out- 
standing woman amongst the small number of 
workers who had the foresight to prepare themselves 
and others in peace time for what then seemed the 
improbable chance of war. One of the most active 
pioneers of V. A.D. work, Lady Perrott for five years 
before the outbreak of war worked under the War 
Office for V.A.D. development and improvement. 
In 1910 she was appointed Lady Commandant-in- 
Chief of the St John V.A.Ds. By constantly holding 
meetings and inspections of detachments all through 
the country, she helped to standardise the training, 
and made herself acquainted with every detail of the 
work. Lady Perrott further performed a splendid 
service when she induced some of the principal 
hospitals, both in London and in the provinces, to 
give facilities for instruction to V.A.D. members. 
This experience in civil hospitals proved of immense 
value when war started. In 1913 Lady Perrott 



60 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

organised a conference on V.A.D. work, which was 
held at St John's Gate and attended by large numbers 
of St John V.A.D. officers from all over the country. 
The effect of this conference was to arouse wide- 
spread enthusiasm for the work. Her own personal 
and detailed knowledge of the detachments stood 
Lady Per rot t in good stead in the stress of the early 
days of war. When the call came from the War 
Office for V.A.D. members to serve in military 
hospitals, the whole organisation for selecting and 
posting the St John members was in her hands, and 
she carried out this work with marked success. She 
also went to France from time to time to inspect. 
From the beginning Lady Perrott toiled early and 
late at St John's Gate, and by her great powers of 
organisation, as well as by her personal influence and 
untiring zeal, she was able to initiate and carry out 
an enormous amount of work. Apart from all she 
has done for the V.A.D., Lady Perrott holds a fine 
record of achievement. To mention only one of her 
other activities, it was through her instrumentality 
that the Board of Matrons was appointed at St John's 
Gate for the selection of fully-trained nurses, one 
hundred of whom were sent out to Brussels in the 
first three weeks of the war by the Order of St John. 
Lady Perrott has also been largely associated with 
the St John Ambulance Brigade Hospital, one of 
the finest hut hospitals in France, for which she has 
collected a large sum of money, besides organising a 
special depot for its supply of stores and comforts. 

Lady Oliver is another untiring worker to whose 
keenness and energy much of the success of the 
V.A.D. activities is due. As staff officer to Lady 
Perrott before the war, she was responsible for a 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 61 

large part of the detailed work. Since the formation 
of the Joint Department, Lady Oliver has worked 
with Mrs Furse at Devonshire House. Lady Perrott, 
Lady Oliver, and Mrs Furse have all been decorated 
by the King with the Royal Red Cross, and are also 
members of the Order of St John, Lady Perrott and 
Lady Oliver being Ladies of Justice, and Mrs Furse 
a Lady of Grace. 



XIV 

COMMANDANT DAMER DAWSON, MRS 
CARDEN, AND THE WOMEN POLICE 
AND PATROLS 

The employment of women for police service, in 
vogue for some years on the Continent and in the 
United States of America, has been developed in 
this country only by the outbreak of the war. 
Women in uniform are so frequent nowadays that 
the passer-by scarcely spares, a glance for a hard 
" bowler " kind of hat, plain blue clothes, and a blue 
armlet with white letters on it. The wearers of this 
uniform seem to be peculiarly unobtrusive people, 
anxious to avoid, rather than to attract, attention. 
For all that, among the innumerable women who 
are taking on the new work which the times have 
entailed, the women police are by no means the least 
valuable, brave, and steadfast. 

The names of three pioneers are impressed on the 
memory of those who have watched the development 
of this movement in Great Britain : Commandant 
Darner Dawson, Superintendent M. S. Allen, and 
Inspector Goldingham. It is largely through their 
tireless efforts that the Women Police Service, the 
association that they originated, has now at its com- 
mand one of the finest bodies of women in the 
country. The influx of the Belgian refugees in 

62 




To face p. 63. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 63 

August 1914 became the starting-point of the move- 
ment. While aiding forlorn exiles lost in London 
byways in the small hours of the night, it was borne 
in upon Miss Darner Dawson how much work in 
the streets could be done by an organised band of 
trained women, armed with authority. The idea 
took root in her mind and grew with her work. She 
was soon joined by Miss M. S. Allen and Miss 
Goldingham, and from that period the Women 
Police Service may be said to have originated. 
These pioneers obtained the necessary training and 
soon set to work in the organisation of a voluntary 
corps. Recruits flocked in, undertook necessary 
training in drill, practical and theoretical instruction, 
and soon obtained positions as officially appointed 
policewomen. In this capacity they undertake such 
work as patrolling the streets, attendance at police 
courts, domiciliary visiting, the supervision of music- 
halls, cinemas, and public dancing-halls, and the in- 
spection of common lodging-houses. 

The need for their services grew steadily. In the 
summer of 1916 it was found necessary to obtain 
further control and supervision of the women em- 
ployees in munition factories, and Sir Edward Henry, 
the Chief Commissioner of Police, recommended 
that the Ministry of Munitions shpuld apply to 
the Women Police Service for a supply of trained 
women. This request has now created an extensive 
development, and a new department of the Women 
Police Service is at present working at high pressure 
under the Ministry of Munitions. Recruits are 
streaming in, and are receiving a special training, 
on completion of which they are drafted to the 
munition factories. There they undertake multi- 



64 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

farious duties, including checking the entry of 
women into the factory; examining passports; search- 
ing for such contraband as matches, cigarettes, and 
alcohol ; dealing with complaints of petty offences ; 
assisting the magistrate at the police court ; and 
patrolling the neighbourhood of the factory with a 
view to the protection of the women employees. 
In the case of misunderstandings amongst the women 
employees, the services of the women police have 
been remarkable, and there are many recorded 
instances where they have averted strikes in the 
munition factories, and thus saved the nation from 
ill effects on output. 

In many such ways the women police have proved 
themselves a valuable national asset. When the 
war is over, Commandant Darner Dawson and her 
colleagues will doubtless find that the service they 
helped to introduce as an emergency measure has 
become a recognised institution of a new social order. 

A further service, that of Women's Patrols for the 
protection of girls in the streets, has originated with 
the problems connected with the war. Reports from 
various quarters having reached the National Union 
of Women Workers as to the dangers caused by 
the presence of numbers of young girls in the 
neighbourhood of military camps, it was resolved 
to organise a body of women of mature age and 
experience to aid the police in maintaining order. 
Here again the names of three outstanding women 
are associated with this work : Mrs Carden, the hon. 
secretary to the movement ; Mrs Creighton, widow 
of the late Bishop of London ; and Lady Codrington, 
chairman of the London Committee of Women's 
Patrols. To these pioneers the work owes its initia- 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 65 

tion and development. A scheme was formulated, 
welcomed at once by the Home Secretary and the 
Chief Commissioner of Police, and by November 
1914 the Women's Patrols were in working order. 
Branches were quickly established throughout the 
United Kingdom and Ireland, and there are now 
over 2000 women working in this connection in 
different parts of the country. In its initial stages 
the work was entirely voluntary ; but since its 
efficiency has been established and noted by the 
authorities, women's patrols have been appointed in 
various districts and paid at the same rate as men 
constables. 

The main duty of the patrols is to enter into 
kindly relationship with girls loitering in vicinities 
where soldiers congregate. Their mission is not to 
the vicious, or to the " fallen," but to the thoughtless 
girls, led astray mainly through their excitement at 
the unaccustomed presence of so many soldiers and 
by patriotic emotions of admiration and gratitude 
to the nation's young defenders. The women on 
patrol aim at getting into touch with such girls and 
helping them to a healthy employment of their 
leisure hours. In numerous cases the Patrol Com- 
mittee have organised clubs in the neighbourhood 
of the military quarters, these meeting-places being 
either for girls alone, or " mixed clubs," where the 
soldiers may bring their girl friends. In the latter 
case, most careful vigilance and supervision from 
the patrols are required and given, and success is in 
most instances attained. This work has been warmly 
welcomed both by the military authorities and the 
police, and it is impossible to estimate the unhappi- 
ness and suffering that have been prevented by 



66 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

this provision of healthy recreation in a moral 
danger zone. 

Reports both from the Metropolitan area (where 
over 400 patrols are now working) and from pro- 
vincial towns give some measure of the success of 
the movement. It is significant that during the Irish 
disturbances of 1916 the Women's Patrols were 
enabled to pursue their customary tasks, being 
"passed through" both by the Revolutionary party 
and by the soldiers. 




Hoppe. 



MISS LENA ASHWELL, O.B.E. 



To face p. 67. 



XV 
MISS LENA ASHWELL, O.B.E. 

Miss Lena Ashwell's work in starting and arrang- 
ing concerts at the front has probably given more 
delight to a greater number of people than the efforts 
of any other individual woman in the war. The 
entire scheme was her own, and it is through her 
untiring efforts and her personal energy that the 
work has been carried on and extended in a way that 
is little short of marvellous. 

It was in February 1915 that Miss Ashwell was 
asked by the Ladies' Auxiliary Committee of the 
Y.M.C.A. to send a concert party to France, and 
with the goodwill and co-operation of that Committee 
the work was launched on its successful course. The 
first party was an experiment in every way, but its 
reception left no doubt as to the feelings of the 
soldier audiences. The love of music is enhanced by 
the alternating monotony and danger of life at the 
front, and is as fundamental in human beings as the 
craving for beauty. This instinct is seen, for instance, 
in the soldiers' touching desire to make gardens wher- 
ever they are quartered, and however unpromising 
the conditions. From Miss Ashwell's tentative effort 
there has grown up a great organisation, in response 
to the ever-increasing request from every base, from 
every camp, from every hospital, and even from the 

67 



68 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

firing-lines, for more and more concerts. In little 
more than two years over 5000 concerts have been 
given in France alone, apart from what has been 
done in Malta, in Egypt, and in the ships of the 
Adriatic Fleet. The audiences have been known to 
number as many as 5000 men, and thus hundreds 
of thousands are reached every month, and millions 
during the year. 

What are called " permanent " concert parties have 
been established at five of the bases in France. Each 
party stays for about six weeks, giving on an average 
three concerts a day. In the afternoons they usually 
perform in the hospitals. In the evenings they 
motor sometimes twenty-five or thirty miles to out- 
lying camps and stations, performing in tents, huts, 
barns, sheds, railway sidings, or even by the roadside, 
to all sorts and conditions of men in all branches 
of the Army. 

The request for the concert parties to go up to the 
trenches and firing-lines soon followed, and this fresh 
branch of work was undertaken. Only men are 
allowed to go in the firing-line parties, and the 
Y.M.C.A. cars convey them on these tours. Con- 
certs have frequently been given under shell fire — 
sometimes to an audience fully armed and liable to 
be ordered into the trenches at any moment. Some 
of the most successful concerts are those for men just 
leaving the trenches after days of fighting, and here 
perhaps the music has had its most wonderful effect. 
It seems to act like magic on the exhausted men, 
strained almost beyond endurance by the ordeals 
they have had to face. The spell of horror is broken 
and their minds are turned away from all they have 
suffered to thoughts of beauty and happiness. The 




To face p. 69. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 69 

existence of the firing-line concert parties is in itself a 
proof of how much the military authorities appreciate 
the concerts and their effects. They have been quick 
to realise that the British Army can stand anything 
better than being bored. The keenness with which 
the concerts are anticipated, the touching patience of 
the men, who will wait for hours in bitter wind and 
rain — they would rather miss their principal meal 
than miss a performance, — the discussion for weeks 
afterwards, all prove how much the music means 
to them. 

At the outset Miss Ashwell determined that the 
concerts should be up to a high standard. The pro- 
grammes are varied as much as possible. Classical 
music, selections from operas, glees, trios, and con- 
certos, the old ballads and folk-songs, are all given, 
as well as popular rag-times and modern chorus 
songs. A "concert party" generally consists of a 
soprano, contralto, bass, tenor, violinist or 'cellist, 
pianist and accompanist, and often a ventriloquist, 
conjurer or reciter. " The entertainment given is a 
mixture of a ballad concert, a recital, and a children's 
party," writes a member of one audience. 

Sometimes plays are arranged, and in the autumn 
of 1916 Miss Ashwell herself took out a small 
dramatic company and acted in Macbeth, The 
School for Scandal, and some short modern plays. 
Writing of these performances, Miss Ashwell says : 
" We gave The School for Scandal in a wood, 
with half our audience on the grass, the other half 
dangerously overcrowding the branches of the nearest 
trees. Macbeth was given in a great hangar, with 
Army blankets for the walls of the banqueting-hall, 
and a sugar-box for the throne. Macbeth was 



70 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

an enormous success. Its reception was wonderful. 
We gave it to vast audiences ; they listened breath- 
lessly in absolute silence, and then cheered and 
cheered and cheered. . . . There were never such 
audiences in the world before — so keen, so appreci- 
ative, so grateful." 

Nothing can be more touching than the apprecia- 
tion of the concerts in hospital. Here again the 
spell of the music seems to relax the strain on the 
men's nerves, and the badly wounded and even dying 
soldiers beg to hear it, and find comfort in the midst 
of their suffering. The following is an extract from 
a letter written by a nurse: "The concert party 
gave a concert in the orderly room here, and after- 
wards those kind people came into each ward and 
sang softly with no accompaniment to the men who 
were well enough to listen, and the little Canadian 
story-teller told stories to each man in turn as he 
was having his dressings done. The result was that 
instead of being a suffering mass of humanity, the 
men were happy and amused through the whole of 
the time that is usually so awful." 

Concerts are also given for the medical service and 
the nurses, for whom these occasional evenings are 
the only relaxation in a life of strict discipline and 
unending work. 

In January 1916, in response to urgent requests, 
arrangements were made to extend the work to Malta, 
and in October 1916 to Egypt ; and, as in France, 
the success has been wonderful. Lord Methuen, 
the Governor of Malta, wrote to Miss Ashwell 
recently : " I cannot tell you the value that your 
concert parties have been to Malta. They have 
kept the men in hospital cheerful, and I am sure 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 71 

that a great deal of the excellent discipline that has 
been maintained here is owing to the interest the 
men have taken in attending your performances." 

From Egypt comes another appreciation from 
General Dobell, who writes : " The Lena Ashwell 
concert party has given concerts at all posts where 
it was in any way possible to allow them to go, and 
the fact that the ordinary rules were waived and 
special permission granted them to travel where no 
civilian in any circumstances had previously been 
allowed to go will make it clear to you how high 
a value we attach to their entertainments." A 
touching account was recently given of an incident 
at a concert in the Sinai Desert. Some soldiers 
in a camp ten miles away, unable to obtain leave, 
were so much disappointed that they induced the 
Royal Engineers to lay some telephone wires, by 
which means these men in the distant camp were 
able to listen to the concert. Innumerable letters 
and testimonies to the success of her work have 
reached Miss Ashwell from all ranks and all branches 
of the Army — generals, commanding officers, 
doctors, chaplains of all denominations unite in 
saying that the concert parties are accomplishing 
work of real military value. Countless have been 
the letters of appreciation from the soldiers them- 
selves. In spite of its rapid and enormous increase, 
Miss Ashwell has continued to organise the work 
in a personal and vital way. Not only has she 
frequently been abroad giving performances herself, 
but she has personally engaged all the artistes for 
the parties and has supervised their complicated 
travelling arrangements. Moreover, she has raised 
the entire funds to maintain the scheme by addressing 



72 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

meetings and by making known the work, which 
has thus been carried on entirely by voluntary 
contributions. 

Miss Ashwell has her thanks in the delight of the 
thousands who have been cheered and helped by the 
efforts of the organisation which she has truly made 
her own. The great message that the music has 
brought to the soldiers is well expressed by a medical 
officer who wrote to her recently : 

" You do help us by heartening the men up and 
sending them back to the firing-line happy, and with 
the feeling that those at home do care, are with them 
and are trying to help." 



V 




MISS VIOLETTA THURSTAN. 



Tejacep. 73- 



XVI 
MISS VIOLETTA THURSTAN 

Miss Violetta Thurstan has had a career as varied 
and adventurous as any nurse during the war, and she 
has certainly used to full advantage the great oppor- 
tunities which have come to her. 

Trained at the London Hospital, Miss Thurstan 
was fully qualified to take up responsible work when 
war broke out, and in August 1914 she was sent 
to Brussels in charge of a contingent of nurses from 
the St John Ambulance Association. Arriving just 
before the capture of the city, she witnessed the 
historical entry into Brussels of the German army. 
Some days later, when the German authorities asked 
for volunteers to nurse at a little town called Marcel- 
line, near Charleroi, Miss Thurstan offered to go, and 
took two nurses with her, leaving the remainder of 
her contingent in Brussels hospitals. 

At Marcelline Miss Thurstan was in charge of a 
hospital under the German military command, where 
she nursed Belgian, French, and German wounded 
for some weeks under very trying conditions, 
aggravated by the brutality of the German system of 
discipline even as regards her own wounded. After 
a period of work, Miss Thurstan was granted leave 
of absence from the Marcelline hospital in order to 
look after the nurses she had left in and near Brussels. 

73 



74 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

She had some exciting adventures, particularly when 
trying to find a nurse in an outlying village, where 
she actually got into the German lines and became 
involved in an outpost action. By this time the 
Germans had decided that no English nurses were to 
be allowed to continue nursing in Belgium ; so instead 
of returning, as she had expected, to the hospital at 
Marcelline, Miss Thurstan was obliged to spend some 
weeks of painful and anxious suspense waiting in 
Brussels, not knowing what fate was in store for her 
nurses and herself. Finally, together with about one 
hundred other nurses from different contingents, and 
some medical men, she was taken by train through 
Germany to the Danish frontier. During the journey 
the nurses were subjected to constant insult and 
humiliation. At Copenhagen, however, these un- 
pleasant experiences were made up for by a cordial 
reception. 

Miss Thurstan was about to return to England 
when she heard of the great need for trained nurses 
in Russia, and, after obtaining permission from Eng- 
land to offer her services to the Russian Red Cross, 
she travelled on from Copenhagen to Petrograd. 
Miss Thurstan started work at once. After nursing 
for a time in base hospitals and learning some Russian, 
she joined a flying ambulance column of motor 
cars, which moved from place to place at the front. 
One of the base hospitals in which she was quartered 
was at Warsaw, where, in spite of the great difference 
between Russian and English hospital methods, Miss 
Thurstan managed to adapt herself to the conditions. 
She was then sent on to Lodz, where she had many 
adventures in the bombardment. Some idea of the 
work may be gathered from the fact that in the 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 75 

Russian retreat from Lodz over 18,000 wounded were 
evacuated in four days, during which time the nurses 
worked practically without rest and under terrible 
conditions. 

Miss Thurstan's life with the workers of the 
motor ambulance unit was remarkable. They were 
always on the move, and only just behind the front 
trenches, using any available building as a hospital. 
At one place they worked in a theatre attached to a 
hunting-box belonging to the ex-Tsar, and of the 
work there Miss Thurstan wrote: "The scenery 
had never been taken down after the last dramatic 
performance, and wounded men lay everywhere 
between the wings and drop-scenes. The auditorium 
was packed so closely that you could hardly get 
between the men as they lay on the floor." At 
another dressing station, established near the trenches, 
750 patients passed through the hands of the small 
unit in little over twenty-four hours. 

Miss Thurstan was shortly afterwards wounded 
when attending to soldiers in the trenches ; and as 
pleurisy developed later she had to give up work for 
a time and come home to England. Before leaving 
Russia she was awarded the medal of St George " for 
courage and devotion." 

In 1915 Miss Thurstan returned to Russia on work 
of a different character — to assist in organising the 
hospital units which were being sent from England 
to work among the refugees. For three months she 
travelled all through the country, inspecting the 
arrangements which had been made in Petrograd, 
Moscow, Kiev, Kazan, Nijni, and the remote districts 
to cope with the bewildering influx of over five 
million dazed and terrified people who fled from 



76 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

their homes before the great German advance into 
Russia. As a result of Miss Thurstan's inquiries 
and the information which she was able to obtain, 
several units with doctors, nurses, and supplies were 
sent out to Russia, and have done fine work for 
the refugees. Help for these unfortunate victims of 
war was badly needed, for their numbers were so 
overwhelming and their condition so appalling, that, 
in spite of the noble effort made by the Russian 
authorities to cope with such an immense problem, 
many difficulties connected with the welfare of the 
refugees continued to arise. Writing of them, Miss 
Thurstan said : " Verily the English language lacks 
words to express the suffering that these people 
underwent, and nothing that we can imagine could 
be worse than the reality." 

On returning to England Miss Thurstan was en- 
gaged for a time in organising and secretarial work 
for the National Union of Trained Nurses. She 
was then asked to accept the post of Matron at 
the Hopital de l'Ocean at La Panne in Belgium, 
where she is still on duty. This hospital has over 
1000 beds occupied by patients of Belgian, French, 
English, German, and even Russian nationality. It 
is established five miles from the front, so the 
work is far more acute than is usual in a base 
hospital, the severest cases being dealt with straight 
from the trenches. 

Miss Thurstan presides over a staff of Belgian and 
English sisters and V.A.Ds. under Belgian doctors. 

Such, then, has been Miss Thurstan's war service — 
as fine a record of achievement in the cause of suffer- 
ing humanity as any woman can show. Not the 
least wonderful fact about her is that Miss Thurstan 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 77 

is very frail, and has always been delicate. Only her 
spirit and pluck have carried her through and enabled 
her to do the hardest work under the roughest of 
conditions. 

Writing of her, a friend says : " There is no 
doubt that Violetta Thurstan is a woman with a 
touch of genius and with, as well, a great devotion 
to work — not an e very-day combination. She has 
determination and courage in an unusual degree, and 
is gifted with imagination and a deep sense of beauty 
— nevertheless, she can drudge." Miss Thurstan was 
recently decorated by the King, in recognition of her 
devoted services. 



XVII 

H.R.H. PRINCESS BEATRICE, 

THE HON. LADY LAWLEY, G.B.E., AND 

THE COUNTESS OF GOSFORD 

Women's share has indeed been magnificent in 
the work of equipping the hospitals with bandages, 
garments, stores, and comforts of all descriptions. 
In the first week of war it is no exaggeration to say 
that there was hardly a woman in the kingdom who 
was not making something for the sick and wounded. 
But organisation stepped in at once to direct and 
systematise their efforts, and the main work has 
been carried on under the auspices of Queen Mary's 
Needlework Guild, and the Joint Societies of the 
British Red Cross and the Order of St John. 

Queen Mary's Needlework Guild was inaugurated 
the day after war was declared, and, in response to 
an appeal by Her Majesty the Queen to the women 
of England, consignments of garments and comforts 
soon began to flow in. The headquarters of the 
Guild were established at Friary Court, St James's 
Palace, under the direction of the Hon. Lady Lawley, 
who has acted as honorary organising secretary 
throughout. In the rooms of the old Palace, which 
formerly glittered with all the splendour of the King's 
State levees, mountains of garments and hospital 
necessaries were soon piled up. The organisation has 

78 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 79 

developed until now it stretches round the world, and 
the stream of supplies has continued with an ever- 
increasing volume. In the United Kingdom 470 
branches have been formed since the work of the 
Guild was initiated. From overseas the response to 
Her Majesty's appeal has been even more remark- 
able. Seventy branches and many sub-branches have 
been established even in the remotest corners of the 
earth, and the work which they have done, and the 
number of garments which they have sent in to 
Friary Court, have been no less even than the vast 
quantities which have been supplied by the workers 
in the United Kingdom. The number of garments 
received at headquarters is now approaching five 
and a half millions, of which over five and a quarter 
millions have been despatched. A record was estab- 
lished when, in one specially busy week, a quarter of 
a million garments were sent off. These figures do 
not include the enormous consignments received at 
and despatched from many of the branches working 
on independent lines. 

Hospitals at home and abroad, convalescent homes, 
British military and medical units in Europe, Africa, 
and Mesopotamia, the Navy, the Allied forces, the 
Belgian refugees, the Prisoners of War, are some of 
the recipients of gifts from this great distributing 
centre at Friary Court, for the sympathies of the 
Guild are as catholic as its friends and supporters 
are widespread. 

Daily reports of the work are submitted to Her 
Majesty the Queen, who has thus kept in close 
touch with all the details of the organisation. Lady 
Lawley and a large staff of voluntary workers have 
laboured unsparingly throughout, and are responsible 



80 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

in a great measure for the ready help which has 
been granted on so many sides. The following 
extract from a letter from a high authority in 
France is a typical tribute : " In this past fortnight 
the demand has been unprecedented, and I have 
been able to meet every requirement. I can never 
be grateful enough to the Guild. ... I don't think 
any of us can ever thank the work parties half 
enough for their very useful help." 

The largest surgical branch of Queen Mary's 
Needlework Guild is at the Central War Hospital 
Supply Depot, where truly inspiring work is being 
done in the making of hospital requirements. The 
depot was founded in April 1915 by Miss Ethel 
M'Caul, R.R.C., who originated and developed the 
system of work. When at the end of that year 
Miss M'Caul resigned, H.R.H. Princess Beatrice 
graciously undertook to carry on the work of the 
depot, and appointed Mrs E. H. Gibson as her 
general manager. 

The workers attached to this depot number 3500, 
and their service is entirely voluntary. There is no 
obligation to work for any stated time, but each 
worker is free to come for as long and as often as 
possible. Though the majority are part-time workers, 
there is a nucleus of " steady plodders " who come all 
day and every day. With woman's infallible instinct 
of dressing for her part, an optional but universally 
adopted uniform is worn in the depot — a white 
linen overall and a flowing white coif, which give 
the workrooms a charming and picturesque aspect. 
Each worker pays a subscription of Is. a week, 
which, besides covering the house expenses of the 
depot, makes a considerable contribution towards 




To face p. 81. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 81 

the cost of materials and packing. Apart from this 
maintenance fund, money for the work has been 
entirely provided by voluntary gifts. 

This Central Depot has been the parent of a 
great organisation, which has spread throughout the 
country till now 220 branches have been established 
in the United Kingdom. Thus the work has grown 
and extended till there is hardly a town of importance 
where the host of women who have too many home 
ties to give themselves entirely to war work may yet 
devote whatever time they can to making hospital 
requisites under skilled instruction. The Central 
Depot issues patterns to its branches, and only work 
up to a high standard is passed for the hospitals. 
Marvels of ingenuity have been evolved in the way 
of bandages ; the modern bandage is constructed 
with a view to making dressings as easy and painless 
as possible, and it can be put on with the minimum of 
movement for the patient. Sterilisation of dressings 
is a great feature, and all sterilised goods are carefully 
packed in paper, afterwards hermetically sealed in 
waterproof cases actually in the sterilising room, 
thus rendering them ready for immediate use on 
being unpacked. Visitors cannot help being struck 
by the professional aspect of the work, whether they 
are looking at the complicated and beautifully sewn 
bandages, the well-made garments, or the perfectly 
packed parcels. Though the workers are volunteers, 
there is none of that amateur aspect which is apt 
to be associated with voluntary work. 

Altogether many hundred hospitals have been 

supplied, most of which are in receipt of regular 

consignments. The branch depots are encouraged 

to send their products to local hospitals, but they 

6 



82 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

also forward a certain amount to the Central Depot. 
The output from this depot last year reached over 
three million articles, such as bandages, surgical 
dressings, splints, clothing, and slippers. 

Such a successful and invaluable organisation is 
one of which all the women concerned may be justly 
proud. The practical assistance of H.R.H. Princess 
Beatrice, which entails her almost daily presence at 
the depot, and actual work in the bandage depart- 
ment, has added greatly to the satisfactory results. 
The general manager has given silent proof of her 
own capacity in the achievements of the entire 
organisation ; such work can only be carried on if 
it is managed with infinite tact, foresight, and 
energy. 

At Mulberry Walk, Chelsea, another depot is doing 
particularly helpful work. The special feature of 
this branch is the department for light splints and 
supports, made in papier-mache, to fit exactly the 
casts of individual patients' limbs, taken by the 
workers. Some of these women are sculptresses, 
whose experience in their own profession has accus- 
tomed them to the handling of plaster for the casts 
and the subsequent modelling of the splints. The 
lightness and perfect fit of these splints make them 
of the greatest comfort to the wearers, and their 
beneficial effect has been remarkable. 

Under the Joint Societies of the British Red Cross 
and the Order of St John another great organisation 
has been established which has its headquarters at the 
Central Workrooms at Burlington House, where work 
is carried on under the presidency of the Countess of 
Gosford. The organisation is divided into four main 
branches, which include the work carried on actually 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 83 

at the Central Workrooms, the work of the branch 
depots and working parties, the home workers, and 
the department for supplying patterns. 

At the Central Workrooms nearly a thousand 
voluntary workers have been enrolled, who have 
produced a total of over 350,000 articles, which 
include a large proportion of bandages, besides 
hospital garments. In addition to this, a large 
number of garments and bandages have been made 
and supplied as patterns to the working parties ; 
the pattern department has also issued thousands of 
paper patterns, books, and directions. 

Asked to register at the Central Workrooms, 
and so to form a part of this great national organisa- 
tion, these working parties, which number over 2000, 
have established a truly wonderful record. It is 
impossible to give even an approximate idea of the 
total of the vast supplies of hospital necessaries which 
they have produced, but recent returns from only 
975 of the working parties over a period of about 
eighteen months show the astonishing output of 
nearly five and a half millions of articles for 
hospital use. Such figures show that women of the 
country, to whom more conspicuous service has been 
denied, have indeed achieved miracles of devoted 
industry. In recognition of their work, the Central 
Workrooms issues special certificates, and also 
distributes Government badges, on application by 
the responsible heads, to members of these working 
parties who have produced a specified output, and 
there are to-day close on 40,000 workers who may 
be justified in showing with pride these tributes of 
recognition. The scope of these registered working 
parties is world-wide, and stretches from Portugal to 



84 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

the West Indies, from Sierra Leone to California, 
from New Zealand to Panama. 

Other contributors to the supplies of the Central 
Workrooms are the registered home workers, who 
have produced a great output of needlework, besides 
innumerable contributions for hospital use of games, 
books, stationery, musical instruments, etc. Lady 
Gosford is controlling a department of which she 
and her helpers may well feel proud, and it is largely 
owing to the fine stimulus from headquarters that 
the total records have been so satisfactory. 

In a great department in the British Red Cross 
Society's buildings, weekly deliveries of all the work 
made and collected by the Central Workrooms are 
received, together with countless other gifts of 
hospital comforts from all over the world. Here 
the miscellaneous collection is sorted and despatched 
according to the requests from the hospitals by a 
voluntary staff who have been working under Lady 
Sophie Scott for nearly three years. The goods 
are packed and sent not only to the hospitals in 
Britain and in France, but to all the remoter theatres 
of war — Malta, Egypt, Salonika, Mesopotamia, 
Palestine. Besides sending to British hospitals, large 
gifts have been made to the sick and wounded of the 
Allies. 

At a similar depot for the receiving and despatch 
of hospital equipment and comforts, another devoted 
group of workers under Lady Jekyll has worked 
at this labour of love since the earliest days of the 
war, near the ancient buildings of St John's Gate. 
Here the St John workers of the country send their 
contributions, and goods of all sorts are despatched 
to hospitals at home and abroad. The neat shelves 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 85 

and cupboards contain everything that the sick 
soldiers may want, from warm bed-jackets and 
sleeping-suits to tooth-brushes and soap, while extras 
such as writing materials and games are frequently 
among the gifts. The Red Cross and St John Depots 
each supply a separate group of hospitals, and it is 
indeed a proud achievement that they have been 
able throughout the war to keep pace with require- 
ments on such an enormous scale. 

If the complete history ever comes to be written 
of the work of women with their needles during the 
war, it will reveal an astounding record of patient, 
loyal, skilful achievement, and an output of which 
the figures can only be described as phenomenal. 



XVIII 
^MISS EDITH HOLDEN, R.R.C. 

" I wonder if patients entering the receiving-hall of 
this hospital realise how much they owe to the Lady 
of the Lamp, whose statue has been lent us for the 
war ? " Colonel Bruce Porter, in command of the 
Third London General Hospital, Territorial Forces, 
wrote the above recently in an appreciation of Florence 
Nightingale and the great sisterhood of nurses which 
she founded. From the original 125 nurses — the 
total under her control by the end of the Crimean 
War — has sprung the wonderful organisation which 
is nobly carrying on the noblest of all woman's work. 
To see one of our great military hospitals to-day 
is indeed an inspiring sight. To walk through the 
bright, airy wards, to glance into the spotless theatres, 
to watch the preparation of appetising meals in the 
big kitchens, and to examine some of the modern 
scientific developments, induce a sense of deep 
interest, in which emotions of pity and sympathy 
are overwhelmed in the predominant atmosphere of 
thankfulness and hope. But it is not till a visitor has 
been privileged to enter Matron's office and to be 
shown, in the beautifully kept ledgers, the system of 
organisation, that a true understanding can be reached 
of how it is that the work of this great hospital seems 
to run so smoothly, and with none of the restlessness 




Vandyk. 



MISS EDITH HOLDEN. R.R.C. 



To /ace p. £6. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 87 

and bustle which are associated with undertakings on 
a large scale. 

Miss Edith Holden has been Matron of the Third 
London General Hospital since August 1914. One 
of the biggest military hospitals in the country, it 
contains over 2000 beds, of which 550 are for officers. 
It is certainly the largest collection of beds controlled 
by one matron, for in other of the larger military 
hospitals the patients are in different buildings, each 
containing several hundred beds, and having its own 
matron, though all under one commanding officer. 
The original building was the Royal Victoria Patriotic 
School for Soldiers' Orphans, but as the hospital has 
increased a town of wooden huts has sprung up 
around the central stone edifice. Miss Holden had 
had considerable hospital experience in peace time, 
having been matron at the Richmond Hospital, Dub- 
lin, and assistant matron at Chelsea Infirmary. To 
her skill and power of organisation much of the 
success of the hospital is due. She presides over a 
staff of women numbering 520, which includes fully 
trained nurses, V.A.D. probationers, women orderlies, 
clerks, cooks, and scrubbers ; and if she had no other 
duties, the control of this department alone would be 
a fair day's work. The standard of nursing expected 
at the base hospitals in England is considerably higher 
than abroad, where the patient often feels he is merely 
resting on his way home. " Bed-sores are not always 
avoidable abroad," writes a well-known Army doctor, 
" but they must never occur in a hospital in England." 
The shortage of trained nurses makes the maintenance 
of this high standard no easy matter. " We have 
only two-fifths of the number of trained nurses laid 
down in the establishment as authorised by the War 



88 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

Office Schedule before the war," Miss Holden stated 
recently, and even this nucleus is liable to be drawn 
upon for foreign service. This involves considerable 
strain on the Matron and her assistants. 

There remains as supplementary staff the great 
band of untrained V.A.D. workers, from amongst 
whom the more experienced probationers are con- 
stantly transferred abroad. Miss Holden was one 
of the first matrons to welcome V.A.D. helpers at 
the beginning of the war, and the care which she 
has bestowed on rendering them efficient and skilful 
nurses has been one of the most helpful factors in the 
smooth working of the hospital. 

Another of Miss Holden's multifarious duties is 
the responsibility of catering for the officer patients 
and the women's staff. The management of this 
branch of the work demands brains as well as imagi- 
nation. While the soldiers must receive the dainty 
diet which sick men need, food supplies must be 
closely watched, wastage avoided, and expenditure 
controlled. The happy and human atmosphere of the 
hospital speaks volumes for the personality of those 
in authority. Every aspect gives evidence of deep 
thought, sympathy, and understanding for the welfare 
of the sick soldiers. The spirit of progress is felt on 
all sides. To give only one instance : several of the 
masseurs in attendance are soldiers blinded in the war, 
who have been trained for this work, " and," says the 
commanding officer, " after the war no one must 
employ any other masseurs but blind soldiers." A 
wonderful new branch of work is the facial depart- 
ment. Lieut. Derwent-Wood by the use of metal 
plates has achieved miracles of restoration for those 
most unhappy of all maimed soldiers who suffer from 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 89 

apparently hopeless disfiguring facial wounds. He 
uses his skill as a sculptor to model these masks for 
cases in which surgery cannot restore the missing 
part. 

Yet a further and very human branch of the 
Matron's special, though unofficial, activities is the 
care of the relatives who are sent for by the medical 
officers to see the dangerously ill cases. These un- 
fortunate people arrive, many from remote parts of 
the country, never having been in London before; 
and the Matron has made it her duty to find ac- 
commodation near the hospital to which they can 
be sent. 
. The story of the Matron's day is an endless 
chronicle : ceaseless care for the critical cases under 
her charge, a hundred daily problems to be solved in 
organisation of personnel, stores, equipment, not for- 
getting entertainments, which form a great feature. 
Besides coping with the daily round, she must always 
maintain an open mind for fresh ideas and arrange- 
ments and new experiments in nursing. Above all, 
she must keep the serenity, rapidity of decision, 
firmness, and sense of humour which are essential in 
her responsible office. Miss Holden manages to 
combine these qualities — she is a woman who must 
be obeyed without question, but who may yet be 
approached by the humblest worker in the hospital 
with the certainty of finding sympathy and justice. 

Work in a base hospital is perhaps the most un- 
selfish of all hospital work to-day. There is none 
of the excitement and constant change of the work 
nearer to the front; day by day the routine of the 
wards goes on, unceasing in its calls on body and 
mind, unending in its responsibility, demanding and 



90 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

receiving in its fulfilment the best that women know 
how to give. 

Colonel Bruce Porter paid his women workers a 
well-earned compliment when he reported recently : 
" Since the early days of the war the standard of 
nursing and care of the wards has been maintained 
by means of the loyalty of the reduced staff to their 
chiefs, and the whole of the women here have been 
and are magnificent. To keep this big crowd of 
women workers at their best could only be done by a 
woman of exceptional ability, and I am fortunate in 
having that type of woman as my matron." 




MRS GASKELL, C.B.E. 



To face p. 91. 



XIX 

MRS GASKELL, C.B.E., AND THE HON. 
MRS ANSTRUTHER 

The supply of literature to our soldiers has been 
an undertaking of gigantic proportions. It was a 
woman who in the first few days of war had the 
insight and imagination to realise the part that books 
would play in the soldiers' lives, and the organisations 
for their supply which have grown up to keep pace 
with the ever-increasing demand have been carried 
on almost entirely by women workers. The collection 
and distribution of books to the troops is now under- 
taken mainly by four organisations. The Camps 
Library works under the War Office to supply the 
troops quartered both at home and in every theatre of 
war abroad. The War Library of the Joint Societies 
of the British Red Cross and the Order of St John 
supplies the sick and wounded soldiers in hospitals, 
hospital trains, and hospital ships. The Chamber of 
Commerce supplies the Grand Fleet, and the British 
and Foreign Sailors' Society sends to the merchant 
ships and smaller ships. 

The need for books in hospitals speaks for itself, 
while for our fighting men reading is often the only 
form of recreation. In the various theatres of war 
abroad they are entirely dependent for reading matter 
on what may be sent to them from home. The need 

91 



92 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

for light literature and fiction is endless, to turn their 
thoughts from the horror or the monotony of war. 

The ways in which the books are obtained are 
many and varied. After some months of war, the 
question of keeping up the supply for distribution 
by the libraries became a momentous one. At first 
the newspaper appeals brought in many thousands 
of volumes, financial contributions for buying books 
were sent, and generous gifts were received from 
publishers. But these supplies could not continue 
indefinitely on a sufficiently large scale. A wonder- 
ful solution to the problem came in August 1915. 

The Postmaster-General (Mr Herbert Samuel) 
was struck, on visiting some of the camps and on 
seeing the men in the trenches, by the great value 
to them of the books already sent out. It occurred 
to him that the post-offices of the country might 
be used to become collecting depots for the Libraries, 
and in consultation with Colonel Sir Edward Ward 
and the Hon. Mrs Anstruther a scheme was evolved 
by which anyone could hand a book or magazine, 
unwrapped and unaddressed, over the counter of any 
post-office in the kingdom for the benefit of our 
soldiers. The collections thus made are divided in 
agreed proportions between the four societies already 
mentioned. 

The War Library started work quickly. In the 
first week of the war, Mrs Gaskell, her brother, Mr 
Beresford Melville, and a small group of friends, 
made an appeal in the newspapers for literature for 
the sick and wounded. This was the first of all 
the great war appeals. The response was so rapid 
and so overwhelming that, even in the large house 
lent by Lady Battersea for the accommodation of 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 93 

the books, problems of space and of methods of dis- 
tribution at once arose. But a satisfactory system 
was quickly evolved, and with the assistance of Dr 
Hagberg Wright, librarian of the London Library, 
it has developed into an organisation of clockwork 
perfection. 

Started entirely as a private undertaking, the War 
Library reached such proportions that by November 
1915 it was considered advisable to affiliate it to 
the Joint Societies of the British Red Cross and the 
Order of St John, thus ensuring financial support 
and official facilities of distribution. The work, 
however, has been carried on throughout by Mrs 
Gaskell and a voluntary staff of women helpers, 
whose duties include the unpacking and sorting of 
the books; the cleaning and mending of soiled and 
torn copies; the selection of books by a careful 
system which ensures that each package shall con- 
tain a choice of books and magazines to suit varied 
types of readers ; and the packing, addressing, and 
despatch to the hospitals. Under the present ar- 
rangements 1810 hospitals are supplied in England 
and a fortnightly consignment of books is sent to 
272 hospitals in France, besides the cross-Channel 
hospital service and hospital ships for the Colonies 
and foreign service. Hospitals in East Africa, 
Bombay, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Salonika, and Malta 
receive every month thousands of books and maga- 
zines, the continuous supply travelling smoothly to its 
destination of ambulance, casualty clearing station, 
or base hospital. Under the post - office scheme, 
several thousand books, papers, and magazines are 
received weekly, but in addition many gifts of books 
are sent direct to the War Library. There is also 



94 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

a large department of the War Library for the 
purchase of new books to mix with those given. 
A touching and remarkably successful feature, a 
suggestion of Mr Rudyard Kipling, is a thin scrap- 
book for men who are very ill, made by devoted 
helpers amongst the public, in answer to a special 
appeal. A small department for games and puzzles 
has also been started in response to urgent requests 
from the hospitals. 

Efforts are always made by the workers at the 
War Library to meet the individual needs of special 
cases brought to their notice, and this personal touch 
with patients in hospital is of infinite value. Men 
with long months of life in bed before them have 
been enabled, by means of the books thus provided, 
to study for particular professions and trades. " It 
is our special boast," says Mrs Gaskell, "that no 
request for literature has ever been refused by the 
War Library, even to selecting and packing 20,000 
books in twenty-four hours, or again such a request 
as we had from no less than three Colonial hospitals, 
who asked for the Encyclopedia Britannica in forty 
volumes ! " 

The effects of the work of the War Library are so 
far-reaching as to be incalculable. It is safe to say 
that no small group of women, such as Mrs Gaskell 
and her helpers, can have done more throughout the 
war to cheer the lonely and depressed, to amuse and 
interest the weary, and to turn the minds of men in 
pain to fresh channels which help them to forget 
their suffering. 

The work of the Camps Library was started in 
October 1914, and now consists of the colossal task 
of providing a systematic and regular supply of 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 95 

literature to the whole of the British Army. No 
application is necessary — a box or bale, varying in 
quantity according to the number of men, is sent out 
automatically about once every month or six weeks 
to every unit — however small — in every theatre of 
war. The scheme was originated by Colonel Sir 
Edward Ward, when making arrangements for the 
reception of the Overseas troops on Salisbury Plain. 
He then saw how necessary it was for the men to 
have books and magazines, and he asked the Hon. 
Mrs Anstruther to assist him in forming libraries for 
the use of the men in their leisure hours, to relieve 
the monotony of the long evenings in isolated camps. 
From this comparatively small beginning the present 
system has grown up, and now every commanding 
officer can form a lending library of bound books for 
the use of his men, in every camp or regimental 
institute at home or abroad. These libraries of 
bound books are in addition to the bales of general 
literature which go out from the Camps Library to all 
units serving with the British Expeditionary Force, 
the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and the 
Indian Expeditionary Force. Each box or bale 
contains the greatest possible variety of literature, 
from a classic or standard novel to the most highly 
coloured penny novelette. Magazines and picture 
papers are always included — in fact, there is in each 
box sufficient variety to suit all tastes. Books and 
magazines are passed from unit to unit — till they 
literally fall to pieces, for the life of a book under 
war conditions cannot be a long one, — and the request 
for " more " is loud and persistent. 

Besides these automatic consignments, special 
applications may be made by the chaplains of all 



96 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

denominations attached to the armies in every theatre 
of war, who then receive for distribution fortnightly 
boxes in England or France, or monthly bales on 
the remoter fronts. The Camps Library also supplies 
light literature to those soldiers whose need is greater 
than any others' — the prisoners of war ; and large 
libraries have been formed at most of the prisoners' 
camps in Germany. Prisoners' literature is further 
supplied under the Board of Education, which has 
started a special department for sending them books 
on educational and technical subjects, and prisoners' 
individual requests are dealt with there. 

When it is realised that since the beginning of the 
war over 9,000,000 publications have been handled 
at the Camps Library, some idea of the scope of the 
work may be gained. It speaks worlds for Mrs 
Anstruther's powers that she has been able to 
establish a smooth -running organisation on such 
a gigantic scale, but she and her helpers are more 
than rewarded for their efforts in the realisation of 
how much their work has meant to the soldiers. 
Appreciation and thanks pour in from all parts of 
the world. The reception of the books can be best 
described in a soldier's own words : " It was a very 
wet day, and most of the men were lying or sitting 
about with nothing to do: When I said 1 had a box 
of books] to lend, they were round me in a moment 
like a lot of hounds at a worry, and in less than no 
time each had got a book — at least, as far as they 
would go round. Those who hadn't been quick 
enoughs were trying to get the lucky ones to read 
aloud. It would have done you good to see how the 
men enjoy getting the books. . . . Can we have more, 
as many more as you can spare ? " Another officer 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 97 

writes : " My battery has been in action since the 
beginning of November 1914, and I can honestly say 
that no enterprise, public or private, has helped us 
more to keep the men amused and contented than the 
books sent by the Camps Library." Letters such as 
these are eloquent testimony to workers whose labour 
has accomplished such a fine achievement. 



XX 

MISS LILIAN RUSSELL AND 
MISS ALICE BROWN 

Miss Lilian Russell and Miss Alice Brown are 
amongst the ladies who are working in one of 
the branches of the Y.M.C.A. work in France — 
the hostels for the relatives of the wounded. The 
medical officers in the various hospitals in France 
are empowered to telegraph to the parents, wife, or 
sweetheart of any soldier whose condition they 
consider critical. At the request of the military 
authorities, the Y.M.C.A. undertook nearly two 
years ago the work of meeting, housing, and caring 
for the relations during their stay. The sight of their 
own people has undoubtedly saved the lives of many 
patients by reviving their desire to live, even in cases 
which the doctors had thought to be hopeless. 

Many women are giving themselves with the 
utmost devotion to the work of managing these 
hostels. The following accounts are given as typical 
workers' experiences. 

Miss Alice Brown and her sister, Mrs Ballantyne, 
have been in charge of a hostel for many months, 
and no more poignant human experience can be 
imagined. At the end of ten months over 1200 
people had stayed with them, though there is 
accommodation for only about twenty people at a 

98 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 99 

time. Miss Brown and Mrs Ballantyne look after 
their visitors entirely during their stay, and with 
two or three voluntary helpers they keep the house 
and cook for a household which sometimes numbers 
fifty. Writing of her life at the hostel, Miss Brown 
says : " We have all our meals with our visitors, and 
family prayers after breakfast bring a quaint and 
cosmopolitan household together. They come from 
all parts of Great Britain and Ireland. There are 
also wives who have followed their husbands from 
Canada to England, and brothers of New Zealand 
and Australian boys who have been sent straight 
down from the line. They stay with us as long as 
the O.C. at the hospital thinks necessary. The 
patients are not usually told that their relations are 
coming until they are actually on the spot, and then 
great are the joys of meeting." 

Sometimes visitors have stayed with Miss Brown 
at the hostel for many weeks, and on one occasion 
a baby was born there, whose mother had come out 
to see her badly wounded husband. 

From time to time there come the tragedies of the 
relations who arrive too late, and then it is that the 
ladies of the hostels can comfort and befriend these 
poor stricken people, go with them to the military 
funeral, and help them to return to England. In- 
deed it is mostly sad work, for the relatives are 
sent for only in the very dangerous cases, and 
sometimes they stay on through weeks of anguish 
and suspense ; but Miss Brown strives to keep up 
an atmosphere of cheerfulness and courage, following 
the wonderful examples from the hospital wards, and 
there is an unwritten law in the hostel that no one 
must break down. As an illustration, Miss Brown 



100 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

once described an occasion when she found a girl 
sobbing bitterly in the hostel sitting-room. On 
asking what was the matter, she was told that the 
girl's brother was to have his foot amputated. " Oh, 
that's nothing," said Miss Brown, and was astonished 
afterwards, when she had comforted her visitor, at 
what must have seemed heartlessness on her part ; 
but the loss of a foot is indeed nothing as compared 
with many cases. 

Miss Russell's work is somewhat different in char- 
acter, for the hostel which she manages is at one of 
the chief bases, and is the clearing station at which 
all the relatives coming to France arrive. From this 
base they are then posted on to the various hospitals, 
some having to be sent eighty miles by motor. The 
work here is very strenuous, for it means perpetual 
comings and goings, and there are always twenty to 
thirty relatives resident at this hostel, besides those 
who pass through. The workers can never, at any 
hour of the day or night, feel safe from fresh arrivals, 
for whom food and accommodation have to be pro- 
vided pending the uncertain departures of boats and 
trains. Miss Russell reports that in most cases the 
relatives are touchingly grateful. A welcome for all 
who come is never lacking, but the work of hostel 
helpers is exhausting, physically and mentally, and 
relentless in its demands on their sympathy. One of 
Miss Russell's privileges is a permit giving her the 
entry into all the hospitals, so that she is able to keep 
in touch with some of the soldiers after their people 
have returned, if they are, as she says, "homesick, 
and in need of a little extra spoiling." In a letter to 
a friend she writes : " The opportunities this bit of 
one's work gives are inestimable, and the example of 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 101 

the patient, faithful work the sisters do is the greatest 
help and comfort. Everything, I think, pales before 
their glory — second only to that of the soldiers in 
courage, sacrifice and devotion. As to the men 
themselves, I can't write of what they almost all 
are — how self- forgetful, modest and unselfish down 
to the very gates of death." 

To those who wait in the shadow of suspense and 
anxiety which hangs over so many English homes, 
it is indeed a consolation to know that, if their 
soldier should be lying in danger, his own people will 
be able to go to him. This privilege is available for 
rich and poor alike, the Government being responsible 
for the cost of their journey and visit, however long 
the relations may stay. 



XXI 

MISS DOROTHY MATHEWS AND 
MISS URSULA WINSER 

At a great women's meeting held recently in London, 
Mr Prothero, the Minister for Agriculture, used the 
following words : 

" I do not pretend that work on the land is attrac- 
tive to many women. It is hard work — fatiguing, 
backaching, monotonous, dirty work in all sorts of 
weather. It is poorly paid, the accommodation is 
rough, and those who undertake it have to face 
physical discomforts. In all respects it is comparable 
to the work your men-folk are doing in the trenches 
at the front. It is not a case of ' lilac sunbonnets.' 
There is no romance in it : it is prose." 

But in spite of all the difficulties which agri- 
cultural work presents for women, they are taking 
it up in ever-increasing numbers, in view of the 
country's necessity. The success of women in agri- 
culture is largely due to a splendid organisation, the 
Women's National Land Service Corps, formed pri- 
vately, but now working in close co-operation with 
the Government departments. This corps first 
advertised the necessity for the employment of 
women on the land, and initiated opportunities for 
their training on a large scale. 

Miss Dorothy Mathews and Miss Margaret Hughes 

102 




* 04 

o o 



O hH 



To face f>. 103. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 103 

are two typical workers, educated women used to 
comfortable surroundings, who have come forward to 
fill the places of the men who have gone to fight. 
Miss Mathews and Miss Hughes are engaged in the 
heaviest forms of agricultural work, which, however, 
they report to be quite within the power of women. 
The healthy outdoor life and the work itself natur- 
ally tend to increase strength, " and," said Miss 
Mathews recently, " we are astonished at the ease 
with which we do things that seemed almost im- 
possible some months ago." 

The usual farm day starts with milking, and when 
this is done the serious work begins, varying accord- 
ing to the season of the year. The field work is of 
course the heaviest, but Miss Mathews and Miss 
Hughes each takes out her own team of horses for 
ploughing and harrowing, and as they are working in 
a very hilly part of the country, in Herefordshire, this 
is exceptionally hard. Writing to a friend recently, 
Miss Hughes said: " On our first morning at the farm 
we were put straight on to ploughing a field up on the 
hills, with a glorious view across the Wye Valley and 
right on to the Malvern Hills. Happily, we managed 
quite well, though we were in a ' blue funk,' having 
only our one month of training-college experience to 
go on. We went on ploughing practically every day, 
and our last piece of work before the frost set in was 
to help plough up an eight-acre piece that had been 
under grass for eleven years — it was a business ! " 

As well as ploughing and sowing the fields, these 
girls do manure carting and spreading, grinding, and 
root-pulling. They also groom the horses, mix the 
food, feed the stock, and clean out the cowsheds and 
stables. Describing another branch of her work 



104 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

recently, Miss Mathews wrote : " During the severe 
weather we had a strenuous time thrashing. All 
hands were requisitioned, and the engine was kept 
going from 7.30 a.m. till 6 p.m., with only an hour's 
break for lunch. This, of course, meant very hard 
days and long hours, not to mention the dust. Miss 
Hughes and I were put on to pitching from the rick, 
and mighty strenuous work it is. It was amusing to 
discover that we had the most tiring job ; naturally 
there wasn't a rush for it by those who knew." In 
addition to their farm work, Miss Mathews and Miss 
Hughes do their own cooking and housework ; there- 
fore they are really doing a man's work outside, but 
without the prepared meal and the immediate rest 
that most men can look forward to after work. 

Another branch of agriculture which women are 
beginning to take up with success is work with heavy 
motor tractors. 

Miss Ursula Winser and Miss Mollie Jameson are 
good examples of women who do this sort of work. 
These girls have been driving a tractor-plough in 
Shropshire. They volunteered for the work at a 
time when the local farmers were in despair at their 
inability to use the only tractor in the district, the 
last available driver having been called up for military 
service. The girls had had some experience of 
motors, Miss Winser having been "chauffeur and 
odd man " when working as a V. A.D. in a hospital at 
the beginning of the war. She was not accustomed, 
however, to a type of car of which the starting-handle 
alone weighs many pounds. Moreover, in order to 
be taken along a road from one field to another, a 
tractor requires to have the " spuds " taken off the 
wheels. These are strips of steel, put on with two 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 105 

bolts and nuts each, and there are twelve spuds on 
each wheel, usually thickly covered with mud and 
oil, so their removal is no drawing-room job. But 
Miss Winser and her friend were not to be daunted. 
In spite of their lack of experience, and further 
hampered by a large audience, which assembled, in 
a spirit inclined to mockery, to watch their efforts 
during their first days of work, they ploughed on in 
the most literal sense, conquering their difficulties 
and gradually acquiring mastery over the tractor. 
Miss Winser and Miss Jameson take the work of 
driving the tractor and managing the plough by 
turns, the former being very hot and the latter very 
cold work. They have now worked the tractor for 
some months, taking it over considerable distances 
to farms all through the district. They are able to 
plough from four to five acres of land in a day, and 
have recently started training some of the local girls 
in this work. 



XXII 

MISS EVELYN LYNE AND 
MISS MADGE GREG 

In addition to their great hospital work, the Joint 
Societies of the British Red Cross and the Order of 
St John have established many of what may be 
called the additional links in the long hospital chain 
which stretches with such perfect organisation from 
the spot where the soldier is wounded on the battle- 
field to the point where he is able to return with 
renewed strength to duty. The accounts which 
follow of the experiences of two workers illustrate 
the similar lives of many other " V.A.Ds." 

Miss Evelyn Lyne went to France in October 1914 
as cook in the first Voluntary Aid Detachment to 
be sent abroad. The detachment was to start a rest 
station at one of the base railway stations for 
feeding and re-dressing the wounded as they came 
through in the hospital trains from the front. A series 
of railway luggage- vans drawn up on a siding had to 
serve as the headquarters of the detachment, which 
Miss Lyne described as follows : " We had very hard 
work and great fun scrubbing and disinfecting the 
vans ; they looked beautiful when finished, and were 
equipped as a kitchen, dispensary, dressing station, 
store-room and common room respectively. No one 
would believe what a charming kitchen a railway 

106 




To face p. 107. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 107 

truck made. Besides the kitchen we had a very long 
fire burning between old railway lines arranged at the 
right distance to support the huge pots for making 
cocoa, six pots at a time, so that we could have 
enough for 300 boiling at once. We worked day and 
night at the rest station in twelve-hour shifts, and, 
being a humble cook, it was my lot to stand for 
hours over the fire stirring cocoa, sometimes in the 
pouring rain, and with smoke belching into my eyes." 
As a rule the rest- station workers were given only 
an hour's warning of the arrival of a hospital train, 
and then had to prepare food for from 300 to 800 
wounded men. When the trains came in, the 
workers would take their cauldrons of cocoa or soup 
and baskets of food on handcarts to the carriages. 
" No words can ever express how splendid the 
wounded men were," wrote Miss Lyne : " one never 
heard a complaint, and we were so thankful to be 
able to do just that little for them." 

Later Miss Lyne was sent to cook for between 
eighty and ninety nurses at their billet in an old 
chateau at one of the hospital bases. This was hard 
work indeed, for she was the only cook, and had eight 
meals a day to serve. The nurses were on Army 
rations, so a whole sheep or the quarter of a bullock 
would be left at the door daily, and Miss Lyne soon 
became an expert butcher ! When later she had to 
return to England she wrote : "I shall always look 
back on those days in France as the happiest time 
of my life." She is now working as an inspector of 
hostels under the Ministry of Munitions. 

Miss Madge Greg has been doing rest-station 
work since January 1915, and has been quartered at 
various stations on the lines of communication. 



108 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

Starting a new station entails hard work, and the 
workers need to show resource and quickness, and 
the ability to adapt their arrangements on the instant 
to existing conditions, however inconvenient and 
uncomfortable they may be. Railway trucks or a 
goods shed have had to be transformed in a few hours 
into a spotlessly clean dressing station, where men 
could be brought from the improvised ambulance 
trains to have their wounds re-dressed. 

On one occasion the unit with which Miss Greg 
was working received a message that unexpected 
special trains were on their way, and could not be 
drawn up at the existing rest station. Within an 
hour the workers managed to get their stores and 
apparatus moved round to another part of the line. 
" And," writes Miss Greg, " by 7 a.m. we had every- 
thing in readiness within the new dressing station, 
and ten boilers of hot cocoa out near the trains. 
There followed days and nights of continuous hard 
work, and more trains than ever before — this was 
our experience of the battle of Loos." 

With time the rest stations were housed in proper 
huts, and also, as the number of fully-equipped 
hospital trains increased, the need for dressings was 
no longer so urgent. A later development has been 
an arrangement for small wards at some of the rest 
stations, where bad cases could be brought from the 
trains and 48-hour cases from among the local troops 
could be treated. 

In many ways rest-station duty is very trying, for 
the work is necessarily so unevenly divided. Times 
of rush come after the heavy fighting, when there 
is no respite by day or night. But workers like 
Miss Greg and her companions never spare them- 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 109 

selves fatigue or effort. The only thing that matters 
is that no ambulance train should find them unpre- 
pared, no wound should suffer for want of fresh 
dressing, no cold, tired soldier should be disappointed 
of his hot drink. The rushes are followed by long 
periods when there is hardly enough work to fill 
the day, and the girls become conscious of the grim, 
draughty surroundings of the railway station, which 
form the entire horizon of their life. They have, 
however, found many other little ways of service, 
such as undertaking all the laundry arrangements 
for the sisters nursing permanently on the ambulance 
trains, starting a lending library, and doing "little 
things " for the soldiers on the leave trains. It 
is just in the doing of these "little things" that 
Red Cross workers, amongst whom Miss Greg and 
Miss Lyne are typical, are performing such valuable 
service. There is little excitement and no limelight 
in a life such as they lead, and it entails hard 
work at any hour of the day or night, whenever 
they may happen to be called upon. But their 
reward lies in the moments of cheer and brightness 
which they have been able to bring to so many 
thousands of suffering men, in that never-ending 
procession of pain ebbing away from the battlefields. 
Their kind ministrations have changed a dreary wait 
in a cold, dull station into an episode that soldiers 
who have passed through will remember with thank- 
fulness — a moment of respite, bringing new courage, 
warmth, and comfort when all were sorely needed. 



XXIII 
MRS LEACH 

In the summer of 1915 the Women's Legion, a war 
organisation started by Lady Londonderry, represented 
to the War Office that the services of women might 
be used in cooking for the troops. Various obvious 
advantages were connected with the suggestion. 
There was only a limited and insufficient number of 
men trained as Army cooks, and the introduction of 
women to do work which naturally falls within their 
sphere would thus release men for tasks which they 
alone are suited to undertake. It must also be a 
considerable gain to any troops to have their cooking 
managed by highly trained women able to devote 
their whole time to the work, rather than by men 
to whom this was only one of other military duties. 
As a result of these representations, permission was 
obtained in August 1915 for one hundred cooks to 
start work as an experiment in certain of the military 
convalescent camps. 

Almost from the first the work at the camp where 
the largest number of women was employed was 
carried on under the personal management of 
Mrs Leach, who has been identified throughout 
with the movement. She is now in control of the 
great organisation of women cooks for the Army 

which has grown out of this tentative beginning. 

110 




MRS LEACH. 



To face p, no. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 111 

After a six months' trial the success of the experi- 
ment was assured, and not only had vast savings 
of food been made, but these were combined with 
marked improvement in the standard of camp cookery. 
As a result of this initial success, by February 1916 
the Women's Legion was asked to extend its work, 
and in the course of the year that followed the 
number of women employed in military cooking 
rose from the original hundred to over 7000. When 
it is realised that the cooking for 1000 men has to be 
done by a staff of only thirteen or fourteen women, 
including, besides actual cooks, kitchen helpers and 
waitresses, it will be readily admitted that their 
work is of an arduous nature. A difficulty might 
have been expected in finding a sufficient number 
of suitable women to respond to the ever-increasing 
demand. On the only occasion, however, when an 
advertisement was published asking for the services 
of 1000 women to undertake this hard and not 
particularly well-paid work, no less than 28,000 
applications were received. This fact alone is a 
remarkable testimony to the patriotic way in which 
women have come forward during the war to offer 
to their country the services for which their particular 
training has fitted them. 

The rapid development of this great organisation 
owes much to the powers of judgment, tact, and 
management displayed by Mrs Leach, for even in 
war conditions it is always hard to introduce innova- 
tions without friction. Mrs Leach has been helped 
in her work by her sister, Mrs Long, who has been 
responsible for much of the detailed administrative 
organisation. A large part of the office work, taking 
up of references and arrangements of posting, has 



112 WOMEN OF THE WAR, 

been carried out by Mrs Long, who has also super- 
vised the issue of uniforms. Mrs Leach has been 
personally responsible throughout for the engagement 
of most of the cooks, and for their distribution. She 
inspects the cooking staffs from time to time, and 
all decisions for promotion go through her hands. A 
cook joining a camp staff in a subordinate position 
may rapidly rise to a post of head cook, one of 
considerable responsibility in these days. For, not 
only is the economical use of the country's food 
supplies a matter of national urgency, but the good 
or bad feeding of the individual soldier is admitted 
by all authorities to have a strongly marked effect 
on his fighting power and efficiency. 

The satisfactory reports on the women cooks from 
officers' and men's messes throughout the country 
prove how well the work has been done. But the 
clearest tribute of success came when in February 
1917 this branch of the Women's Legion, which had 
worked hitherto as a private organisation in co- 
operation with the War Office, became incorporated 
actually in the Army as part of the Women's Army 
Auxiliary Corps. The value of Mrs Leach's work 
was fully recognised, and she was asked to continue 
the management of the department under the new 
system. She is the first, however, to ascribe the real 
success of the work to the esprit de corps, the loyalty, 
and the patriotism of the women themselves, who 
have shown their capacity to carry on women's most 
time-honoured household duty under unexpected and 
increasingly important conditions. 




MRS GRAHAM JONES. 



To/acep. 113. 



XXIV 
MRS GRAHAM JONES 

The work of Mrs Graham Jones, in charge of a 
Women's V.A.D. Motor Ambulance unit in France, 
is remarkable in that this unit was the first of its 
kind, and as a result of this successful experiment the 
employment of women as motor ambulance drivers 
for the British Army has been widely extended. 
Undoubtedly this success was mainly due to Mrs 
Graham Jones herself, and her good organisation and 
control of the contingent. Her record is typical of 
thousands of English girls of education and refinement 
who have come forward and given their services for 
work hitherto considered men's work, living hard 
lives under the strict Army discipline enforced for 
all workers in France. 

In April 1916 the British Red Cross Society 
organised this motor unit to take over the entire 
work of a big base hospital in Northern France. 
Mrs Graham Jones, who was given the command, 
had had over six years' experience of motor driving, 
and had already driven an ambulance during the early 
part of the war. Working under her were thirteen 
girl drivers. The unit was attached to a hospital of 
1300 beds, twenty miles away from the port to and 
from which the patients had to be conveyed. The 
ambulance cars were big and powerful, and the girls 

113 8 



114 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

had entire charge of them, not only for driving but 
for cleaning and all except heavy repairs. Mrs 
Graham Jones, writing of the work, says : " It 
included the unloading of hospital trains at our 
station, the transport of patients to the hospital 
ships, to convalescent camps, or to the base head- 
quarters for return to duty ; the conveyance of 
mails and stores, personnel, etc. It was always 
full of interest, but required at the same time 
careful driving and a steady, reliable head. The 
roads through the various camps were so new and so 
narrow, and the obstacles one met on them so varied 
in the way of teams of mules, Army lorries, marching 
platoons, or steam rollers, that there could be no 
relaxation of concentration." 

When the heavy fighting on the Somme began, the 
hospital increased its accommodation, and the demand 
on motor transport was so continuous that the drivers 
were obliged to work in shifts of eight hours on and 
four hours off, to enable the work to be carried on 
night and day. During the rush the girls were driv- 
ing as much as one hundred and thirty miles a day, 
but the care of the cars was never neglected, and it 
was the duty of the off-going driver always to leave 
her car ready for the road. 

A V.A.D. officer inspecting the unit reported 
as follows: "At 5.30 a.m. we were awakened by 
an orderly reporting that a train would be in the 
local station in five minutes. In ten minutes the 
members were pouring out of the house to fetch 
their cars from the garage, and were at the station 
before unloading had begun. They drove very care- 
fully, and we heard nothing but praise of them on 
all sides." 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 115 

It needs little imagination to realise the demands 
such work makes both on mind and body ; for a girl 
must have her full share of self-control and nerve to 
be able to drive a load of wounded men across twenty 
miles of difficult road at night as well as by day, 
when she knows what an error in driving might 
mean to them, and that the slightest want of care 
on her part might cause them unnecessary suffering. 
After the patients are safely deposited comes the 
hard work of cleaning and keeping the cars in 
order — a vital necessity for motor ambulances, for 
wounded men must not run the risk of delays on 
the road. 

In January 1917 Mrs Graham Jones was mentioned 
in despatches for her devoted service and the success 
with which she had run her unit during many months. 
Not the least important of the principles which she 
instilled into her fellow-workers was strict and 
unquestioning obedience to Army discipline. She 
quickly realised that, in order to be of real help, one 
must fit into one's place in the great machine. It is 
because women have learnt during the war how im- 
portant this question of discipline is, that they are 
being employed for the first time, and in ever-growing 
numbers, on active service. Nurses who, throughout 
their training, have always worked under strict rules 
adapt themselves naturally to war conditions, but for 
women who have never been accustomed to a dis- 
ciplined life unquestioning obedience is far harder. 
Writing of women's service in France, Mrs Graham 
Jones says : " It is not that women would be afraid 
of danger : it is that after one has worked on active 
service for some time one feels so much that one 
wants to do work only where the work is wanted, 



116 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

one just wants to help in ever so small a way just 
where the help is needed, and in no case where 
extra trouble or responsibility is thrown on those in 
authority." This is surely the essence of helpful- 
ness, and this is the spirit in which Mrs Graham 
Jones and many others like her are working for their 
country to-day. 




To face p. 116. 



XXV 
MISS GERTRUDE SHAW 

When in the spring of 1915 the cry for " shells and 
more shells " was answered by an almost miraculous 
development of munition factories, it was hardly con- 
templated what an immense share women would be 
able to take in the production of the output. It soon 
became apparent, however, that the national reserve 
of labour lay with them. In their tens of thousands 
women answered the appeal ; in many cases leaving 
their homes to settle in munition areas where popula- 
tion was already congested, or where housing accom- 
modation was on the smallest scale. To maintain the 
efficiency of these new industrial workers, it was clear 
that steps must be taken to secure suitable provision 
for food and shelter. The problem, indeed, soon 
became acute in some centres, and wide experiments 
for the protection of the women workers were made. 
That the results have been so good is due to the 
exertion of certain individual women of forceful 
character and of organising genius, and of these Miss 
Gertrude Shaw is an outstanding figure. 

Trained from the outset of her life for the teaching 
profession, Miss Shaw rose to a headmistress-ship of 
£ higher-grade girl's school at Leeds, and proceeded 
in 1913 to fill the post of responsible mistress at the 
Women's Institute, Woolwich. Besides her literary 

117 



118 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

and scientific qualifications, Miss Shaw had specialised 
in several domestic subjects, including laundry and 
cookery ; she had also obtained the Royal Sanitary 
Institute's certificates as school nurse and health 
visitor. She was thus fully equipped for the task 
when the sudden war demand arose at Woolwich for 
the safeguarding of the health of women munition 
workers. 

The first necessity was the provision of adequate 
meals in the vicinity of the works. This demand was 
at once met by voluntary effort, and it was under the 
leadership of Lady Henry Grosvenor that Miss Shaw 
entered the service of the Y.M.C.A. as superior of 
canteens. She was thus " in at the birth " of the first 
canteen for girl munition workers at the Arsenal, and 
subsequently became responsible for the staff, cater- 
ing, and equipment of four mess-rooms. 

The success of these canteens soon led to Miss 
Shaw's appointment to a wider sphere as lady super- 
intendent of the newly erected Government colony 
at Coventry. This scheme embraces the housing and 
feeding of some 6000 girls and women, drawn from 
every part of the United Kingdom. A group of 
hostels has been built, each housing 100 girls, and 
each is under the direction of a competent matron. 
As lady superintendent Miss Shaw undertook the 
task of selection of all the matrons and their assist- 
ants, of the canteen managers and their subordinates ; 
in all, a staff of some 300 persons. It must be recalled 
that in the organisation of the colony there was 
no precedent from which to take example, so each 
problem had to be met and solved as it arose. Miss 
Shaw's experience and tact has stood her in good 
stead, and it may be stated without qualification that 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 119 

the colony has been an unexampled success. There 
have inevitably been difficulties as to the housing of 
girls from such different localities and varied stations 
in life that their habits, manners, speech at first pre- 
sented awkward barriers ; but the girls have been met 
in a spirit of confidence to which they could not fail 
to respond. Any religious problems have been en- 
tirely overcome by the careful selection of resident 
workers who represent the various denominations. 

The canteen attached to the colony, where the 
girls from all the hostels take their meals, is a further 
triumph of far-sighted organisation. Lady cooks 
have been put in charge and labour-saving appliances 
introduced. It is no uncommon occurrence in the 
canteen to serve 2500 hungry workers with a hot 
meal within seven minutes of the sounding of the 
factory " buzzer " for the cessation of work. 

In addition to this huge task, Miss Shaw has 
initiated many schemes for the recreation and educa- 
tion of her boarders. Classes in hospital work, fire 
drill, singing, dancing, and gymnastic exercises have 
been started, and are now most popular ; occasional 
fancy-dress balls are encouraged, and games are 
taught. The result of these efforts is seen in the 
spirit of happiness pervading the colony and in the 
efficiency of the women workers in this group of 
factories, which surpasses the dreams of an optimist. 

Miss Shaw, however, could not be spared to watch 
the results of her labour in Coventry, for, when 
she had established the colony in working order, her 
organising capacity was requisitioned for a still larger 
task. She is now inspecting and advising on canteens 
and hostels for the Ministry of Munitions all over the 
United Kingdom. 



XXVI 
MRS HARLEY 

Mrs Harley, sister of Field- Marshal Viscount 
French, commenced her nursing service at the be- 
ginning of the war, and was still carrying on fine 
work for the sick and suffering when she met her 
death in their cause on March 7, 1917. The shell 
which burst near Monastir has robbed the world of a 
noble and heroic lady. 

In 1914 Mrs Harley went to France as adminis- 
trator of the first unit sent out by the Scottish 
Women's Hospitals. She proceeded to establish 
a wonderful hospital in the historical Abbaye de 
Royaumont — " one of the most beautiful haunts of 
ancient peace in the world." Under the direction of 
Dr Frances Ivens, this hospital to-day is one of the 
finest and most complete in France, an important 
feature being the possession of a perfect X-ray in- 
stallation, specially chosen by Madame Curie. 

The work of the first Scottish unit was so suc- 
cessful that the French Government soon asked for 
a second, and Mrs Harley took over the administra- 
tion, and went to Troyes to start a hospital there 
in May 1915. This hospital was known as the 
" Girton and Newnham Unit," the past and present 
students of those colleges having raised a large sum 
towards the equipment. The first hospital under 

120 




MRS HARLEY. 



To face p. 1 20. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 121 

canvas to be used by the French, it received General 
Jonre's sanction as a French military hospital. 

When later in the year the French Expeditionary 
Force was sent to Salonika, the military authorities 
requested that this unit of Scottish women should go 
with the expedition, and Mrs Harley again accom- 
panied them as administrator. On arrival they were 
despatched to Gevgheli in Serbia, but had to retire 
in the Serbian retreat. They then established a 
hospital at Salonika, which is still open. 

In July 1916 Mrs Harley came to England to 
take over a flying column of motor ambulances for 
service in the Salonika district. She returned to 
Serbia accompanied by Dr Agnes Bennett, who was 
in charge of the American unit of the Scottish 
Women's Hospitals, equipped with funds subscribed 
by supporters in America as a result of Miss 
Kathleen Burke's appeal. Mrs Harley's column con- 
sisted of a number of light ambulance lorries and 
two field kitchens. Its object was to facilitate the 
more speedy transport of wounded Serbians, whose 
sufferings were greatly increased by the shortage of 
motor ambulances. The column was sent to work 
near the Macedonian front, quite close to the firing- 
line. Writing home, Mrs Harley said : " Now to 
tell you of our first venture. A few days ago a 
British officer, just down from the front, came to tell 
me that the wounded Serbs were in great need of 
nourishment when they were carried down from the 
field, and asking if I would take up my motor kitchen 
and start a canteen for them. In a few hours all was 
arranged, and the next morning I started off. . . . 
We are fairly near the front and in hearing of the 
guns. It is sad seeing the poor men struggle in, and 



122 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

it is good to be able to give them some help." A 
little later, Dr Bennett of the American unit wrote : 
" We are now engaged on very difficult work here, 
getting all the most serious cases direct from the 
dressing station ; these we bring into hospital our- 
selves with the aid of Mrs Harley's flying column. 
This is very difficult and often very dangerous work, 
owing to the bad roads and heavy hill- climbing. 
Our women chauffeurs have done splendid service, 
and Mrs Harley's have been equally helpful. We 
have had a hard day, and many of the wounded are 
still lying out on the hillside awaiting transport, which 
is very scarce." It must have been a strange enough 
sight in the midst of the lonely, barren mountain 
country, and along the rough, precipitous roads, to 
come upon a van of the Scottish Women's Hospitals 
driven by a sunburnt girl of the unit bringing her 
load of Serbian wounded, collected with danger and 
difficulty, down to the safety of the hospital. 

In January 1917 Mrs Harley turned her energies 
to helping the population of Serbian civilian refugees 
at Monastir, who were in dire need of food and 
medical assistance. She also established an orphan- 
age at Monastir, where she collected more than eighty 
children, and looked after them at her own expense. 
It was when engaged on her errand of mercy that 
Mrs Harley met her death. She was wounded in the 
head by a shell splinter, during one of the periodical 
Bulgarian bombardments of Monastir — an open town 
— at the moment when she was actually distributing 
food to starving Serbians in front of her house. 

The touching scenes at Mrs Harley's funeral are 
evidence of the esteem and gratitude with which she 
was regarded in Serbia. She was buried at Salonika 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 123 

with full military honours, and her coffin, covered 
with the Union Jack, was followed by a great con- 
course, which included a large proportion of Serbians. 
In the funeral oration pronounced over her grave, 
the Serbian Minister of the Interior said : " Noble 
daughter of a great nation, though not a sister of 
ours by birth, still dear to us as a true sister, your 
tender soul is followed and ever will be followed by 
our fervent prayers, and by the everlasting gratitude 
of the Serbian nation. Thanks and glory be to you." 
That her spirit and courage live on is manifest in the 
declaration by one of her two daughters, both engaged 
in hospital work in Serbia, that after her mother's 
funeral it was her intention to return to Monastir to 
carry on Mrs Harley's work. 

As a recognition of her services to the French, 
Mrs Harley was decorated by General Sarrail with 
the " Croix de Guerre with palm leaves " — one of the 
highest of French decorations. 



XXVII 

MISS ETHEL ROLFE AND THE WOMEN 
ACETYLENE WELDERS 

In the autumn of 1915 the organisers of the Women's 
Service Bureau, anxious to assist women who applied 
to them for help and advice in obtaining posts under 
the newly constituted Ministry of Munitions, im- 
mediately sought openings in which educated women 
with a natural bent towards machinery and mechanical 
work could receive instruction in a skilled process. 
After consideration, it was decided to arrange a train- 
ing in the process of oxy-acetylene welding, a work 
which seemed to combine various advantages. It 
was a skilled process comparatively new in England, 
and one which women had hitherto had no oppor- 
tunity of learning, and should they be successful in 
taking up the work, there would be plenty of scope 
for them, as the process was being increasingly used 
in aeroplane manufacture. For this reason there was 
a good chance of its being continued after the war, 
and not proving a blind alley like so much present- 
day work. Accordingly, a small school was estab- 
lished under an able and experienced metal-worker, 
Miss F. C. Woodward. 

The process taught is almost entirely used in aero- 
plane construction, namely, the welding of sockets 
and joints, struts, levers, and the parts of the frame- 

124 




To/ace p. 125 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 125 

work. Even before the war there had been a shortage 
of trained welders, and, with the enormous increase 
in aeroplane work and the enlistment of so many 
skilled mechanics, the demand for such workers was 
enormously increased. 

The school was opened in September 1915, and 
by December the first girls were sufficiently trained 
to take posts in a factory, the controller of which 
had been interested in the project, and had helped 
the school at its start in setting up the necessary 
plant. The pioneer women welders have been 
followed by a steady stream ; and such has been 
the success of the training that no welder has any 
difficulty in obtaining employment as soon as she 
leaves the school. From this small training centre 
alone over 150 welders have already passed into 
various works. 

The process is generally recognised as the speediest 
and most effective way of securing a perfect weld 
without any deleterious effect upon the metal, and 
consists in employing the flame produced by the 
combustion, in a suitable blow-pipe, of oxygen and 
acetylene. The temperature of the flame at the 
apex is about 6300 degrees Fahrenheit, and it is 
by this means that the metals to be welded together 
are brought to a suitable heat. The worker's eyes 
have to be protected from the powerful light by 
special goggles, and they also have to wear caps 
over their hair, and leather aprons. The work is 
fascinating, even to the onlooker, and absorbing to 
anyone with craftsman's instincts. It involves con- 
siderable responsibility, and the welder needs to be 
conscientious and careful in the extreme, as upon 
the efficiency of her work, if used for aircraft 



126 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

construction, depends the stability of the machine 
and, consequently, the life of the airman. 

The women welders have not established their 
position without difficulty, faced as they were from 
the start with the fact that men engaged on precisely 
the same work, with no greater output, were yet 
receiving considerably higher wages. By first band- 
ing themselves together in a Trade Union, and by 
bringing the question up for arbitration as to whether 
their work was skilled or unskilled — the decision 
being given in their favour, — the women welders 
have achieved equal recognition with men, and that 
without having recourse to strikes and dislocation of 
national work in war-time. 

A typical worker among the learners of this new 
craft for women is Miss Ethel Rolfe. One of the 
first women to enter the school, after a short course 
of training she took a post in an aircraft factory, 
where she was the only woman welder. She worked 
with one man welder, and sometimes when work was 
slack, owing to the supply of parts being hung up, 
she did brazing, which she learnt from the men with 
whom she worked. She also did fitting, rather than 
stand idle ; and as much overtime was being worked, 
she could help on all three processes when occasion 
required. 

In December 1916, after a good deal of practical 
experience, Miss Rolfe accepted a post in a Govern- 
ment department. In this capacity she visited aero- 
plane works all over the country, spending from three 
to ten days in the shops, studying the work done by 
women, and that done by men which women might 
take over. She reported to her department on 
the detailed organisation of women's work, on the 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 127 

methods of training, and the possibility of further 
dilution of men's work in each firm by the employ- 
ment of more female labour. To do this she had 
to inquire into technical processes, machines, and 
workshop arrangements. She specially urged the 
increased employment of women in fitting and sheet- 
metal work, wood-work, and welding, and in some 
cases on the erection of aeroplanes and the installa- 
tion of the engine. 

After continuing this work for some months, she 
was promoted and transferred to the Production 
Department. She now inspects aeroplane firms 
and reports to her department with a view to an 
ever-increasing output, chiefly obtainable by greater 
efficiency in the labour of women, improved arrange- 
ments in the shops and in the methods of teach- 
ing and supervision. This unique opportunity of 
studying the types of machines and methods of 
construction, coupled with the help of resident in- 
specting engineers, has given her an amount of 
technical knowledge which, with her personal ex- 
perience of factory conditions, has helped her in 
the work of selecting suitable operations for female 
labour. 

Before the war, Miss Rolfe had no previous 
mechanical or scientific training ; she had always 
regretted the lack of opportunity which women found 
in the industrial world, and especially in engineering 
trades. 

Another pupil of the welding school, Miss Mar- 
garet Godsall, who became charge-hand at an air- 
craft factory, has recently died from inflammatory 
rheumatism. She contracted this illness as a result 
of staying on at the factory during a rush of urgent 



128 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

work, though she was suffering from influenza. This 
is a pathetic example of the keenness and the self- 
sacrifice with which girls are throwing themselves 
into their tasks, and their service to the country 
will always be remembered as one of the finest 
records of the war. 




Russell. 



LADY LUGARD. 



To face p. 129. 



^XXVIII 

LADY LUGARD AND THE WAR 
REFUGEES COMMITTEE 

In her work for the great population of Belgian 
refugees, who came over to England in the first 
months of war, Lady Lugard has helped to carry out 
one of the highest missions to suffering humanity. 
Quick to grasp the significance of the German advance 
through Belgium, Lady Lugard, in the first week of 
war, turned her thoughts to the plight of the unfor- 
tunate women and children driven from their ruined 
homes with nothing left to them save life itself. 
Where were they to go, and what was to become 
of them ? Obviously England offered the only safe 
refuge. 

Lady Lugard knew of the complete and detailed 
arrangements which had been worked out during the 
summer of 1914 for the reception of refugees from 
Ulster, in the event of the anticipation of civil war 
being realised. Understanding the importance of 
rapid action and the value of a good organisation, 
Lady Lugard asked the help of the Ulster leaders, 
who willingly placed their machinery at the disposal 
of workers in such a worthy cause. After enlisting 
the support of Cardinal Bourne and the leaders of the 

129 9 



130 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

Roman Catholic Church, and having obtained the 
consent and advice both of the Foreign Office and of 
the Belgian authorities, Lady Lugard, with the help 
of Mrs Alfred Lyttelton, formed a committee. But 
there was little time for deliberation or arrangement 
before she and her helpers were rushed into action, 
Warned on one day that a shipload of possibly a 
thousand refugees might be with them on the next, 
they had immediately to arrange offices, raise funds, 
and prepare accommodation. Mr Norrie-Miller, the 
manager of the General Accident Fire and Life 
Assurance Corporation, placed offices at the com- 
mittee's disposal free of charge, and secured the 
nucleus of a clerical staff. The organisation decided 
to be known as the War Refugees Committee. Its 
non-political and non-sectarian character was marked 
by the fact that Lord Hugh Cecil became chairman 
and Lord Gladstone treasurer, while the Roman 
Catholic and Jewish Churches were represented among 
its members. Lady Lugard and Mrs Lyttelton at 
once proceeded to issue an appeal through the news- 
papers. The response was overwhelming. All Eng- 
land was burning with admiration and pride at the 
great part which Belgium was playing. Throughout 
the country, from homes humble and great, rich and 
poor, money and offers of help flowed in on such 
a scale that, even with the best endeavours, it took 
many days before they could be acknowledged and 
classified. Eagerness to help the victims whose 
suffering was part of the price Belgium had to pay 
in her fight for honour was England's tribute of 
admiration. 

The next question was the momentous one of 
temporary accommodation for the refugees on arrival. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 131 

With the assistance of an ever-increasing group 
of willing volunteer workers, the War Refugees 
Committee soon arranged for beds and food to be 
prepared in the buildings placed at their disposal. 
These were hastily improvised as hostels, with the 
help of generous loans of linen and crockery. If the 
accommodation at first was sketchy, there were at 
least beds and food for all who came, and eager 
sympathy and welcome. 

They needed all the help and comfort which could 
be given to them, these dazed and terrified people, 
with the haunted look of horror on their faces. They 
had endured experiences which our civilisation could 
have ascribed only to a bygone age, and which we 
little thought could pollute the earth again. 

During the next weeks the stream of refugees 
flowed into London in ever greater numbers. The 
work of the War Refugees Committee soon classified 
itself automatically into departments. The clerical 
department had to cope with correspondence which, 
within a fortnight, had mounted to many thousands 
of letters a day containing money contributions and 
placing accommodation for 100,000 people at the 
disposal of the committee. Refugees had to be 
received on arrival and temporarily housed. The 
question then arose of their allocation to more per- 
manent quarters and of arranging that offers of 
hospitality from all over the country should be 
responded to by suitable allotment of refugees. 
From the first it was found advisable to decentralise 
as much as possible and to allow the local committees 
formed throughout the country to make most of the 
detailed arrangements for allocation. These com- 
mittees numbered before long between two and three 



132 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

thousand. Questions of transport and clothing were 
in the hands of other rapidly organised departments. 

Every day the number of refugees increased, and 
members of the committee worked almost without 
rest day and night. In the first week of September 
a Government invitation was published offering 
refuge in England to the Belgian civilian population. 
The magnitude of the task thus became beyond the 
management of a group of private individuals, and 
the committee was relieved of a certain amount of 
anxiety by the provision of refuges on a big scale 
in London at Government expense. Though the 
work was now extended and receiving Government 
assistance, it was to the War Refugees Committee, 
which about this time was placed by mutual consent 
under the general direction of Lord Gladstone, that 
the authorities turned to carry on the great task. 
The committee has continued to work through- 
out in close co-operation with the Government 
Departments, particularly the Local Government 
Board. Large buildings, such as the Alexandra 
Palace and the Earl's Court Exhibition Buildings, 
were taken over and prepared for the reception 
of the refugees, serving as clearing-houses whence 
they could be sent on to the provinces, where 
arrangements for hospitality were made both by local 
communities and by private individuals. The staff 
of voluntary helpers in London soon reached 500, 
who threw themselves with undaunted energy and 
devotion into the task which Lady Lugard herself 
has described as "the consolation of a nation by 
a nation." 

In all her personal intercourse with the Belgian 
refugees, especially of the working class, Lady 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 133 

Lugard has said that what struck her most was their 
pathetic fortitude and the way in which in their hour 
of desperate need they clung to their religion. 
Chapels and oratories were rapidly established 
wherever Belgians were received, and the Roman 
Catholic Church and community worked unre- 
mittingly to comfort and console them. " I don't 
know how many thousand rosaries I distributed 
in those days," said Lady Lugard afterwards ; 
"wherever I went the Belgians seemed to clamour 
for them above everything." It should also be 
mentioned that the Jewish community in London 
took a very active part in helping their co-religionists 
among the refugees. 

From September till Christmas 1914 the flow of 
refugees continued — the fall of Antwerp in October 
bringing a tremendous rush of work amid surging 
crowds. On one day in October the number of 
refugees handled by the Committee amounted to 
6621. By February 1915 their arrival in anything 
like large numbers had practically ceased ; but other 
problems sprang up. It became obvious that the 
war was to last longer than the few months which 
optimists of the early days prophesied. It was there- 
fore decided, after considerable hesitation, that it was 
better, both in their own interests and in those of 
the community at large, that the Belgians, who had 
lived almost entirely as guests, should be allowed to 
work and to become gradually self-supporting. 

In the two years which have elapsed, the working- 
class people who formed the bulk of the refugees, 
while giving still some occasion for pre-occupation 
and expense to their own and to the British Govern- 
ments, have become practically absorbed. In the 



134 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

ever-increasing demand for labour, the Belgians, 
who are known to be among the best craftsmen and 
labourers in Europe, have found a ready market for 
their work. 

There has remained the comparatively small number 
of refugees of a different class, unaccustomed to earn 
their own living, but rendered destitute as the poorest 
artisans by the devastation of their country. The 
great initial work accomplished, Lady Lugard and 
the many others who had by this time become ab- 
sorbed in the work of consolation turned to making 
suitable provision for this group, which included 
families of high social position, artists and professionals 
in many spheres of work, men and women suddenly 
snatched from circumstances of prosperity and ease 
and confronted with the problems of bare existence. 
To assist these unfortunate people Lady Lugard 
organised a small hospitality committee. She and 
her helpers proceeded to arrange a system in London, 
and similar arrangements have been evolved on 
private initiative in the great centres in the pro- 
vinces. In London large houses were placed one by 
one at the committee's disposal, and social groups of 
Belgian families were established in them. In these 
hostels, family life is as far as possible reproduced, 
questions of education, health, and clothing receive 
special care and attention, and the attempt has been 
made to classify the houses in such a way as to 
bring friends and potential friends into the same 
circles. The results have been most satisfactory. 
The domestic management is undertaken in each 
house by a competent manager, sometimes Belgian, 
sometimes English, appointed by Lady Lugard's com- 
mittee. Many of the managers are lady volunteers, 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 135 

who give the whole of their time to the promotion 
of happiness and comfort in what one of the guests 
has described as " ces petits coins de Belgique." The 
one rule of the committee is to try and make the 
Belgians happy. If their lives are necessarily re- 
stricted and limited by circumstances, these Belgian 
guests are at anyrate living in quiet resting-places, 
recovering, it is hoped, from the shock of their ex- 
periences, educating their children, and meanwhile 
possessing their souls in patience till the day of their 
country's liberation. 

The numbers in which the Belgian population took 
refuge in England from first to last have been so 
great, and the rush in the beginning so bewildering, 
that it would have been impossible to carry out a 
work of necessity hastily improvised without mistakes 
and difficulties. Lady Lugard is the first to admit 
how far the schemes fell short of the perfection which 
she had hoped to achieve. But when the story of 
this flight of a nation is told, history will remember, 
not the misunderstandings, the mistakes in detail, or 
the want of foresight, which seem inevitable in all 
human undertakings, but the way in which the 
English people opened their arms in welcome to 
the Belgians, and their desire to comfort and to heal. 
To Lady Lugard personally must be ascribed full 
recognition for a truly great service. By her 
promptitude, her imagination and her unsparing gifts 
of energy and devotion she stands out amongst 
the throng of splendid volunteers in the service of 
Belgium. 



XXIX 
MISS CHRISTOBEL ELLIS 

Since the early days of the war, the aspect of our 
streets has undergone many changes ; but there is 
no more certain sign of the times than the sight 
of women in khaki uniforms and military badges 
driving Army motors and lorries. Though these 
enterprising women excited surprise some months 
ago, they are fast becoming as numerous as men 
drivers. 

The women drivers of the Army are under the 
management of a department of the Women's 
Legion, and form a part of the Women's Auxiliary 
Army Corps. At the head of the motor branch is 
Miss Christobel Ellis, who has in her hands the 
development of a great new scope of activity and 
usefulness for women workers. Miss Ellis, already 
an experienced motorist, offered her services to the 
French Red Cross in September 1914, and for some 
months she drove for them, and also for the British 
Red Cross Society, in France. During the days of 
the battle of the Marne and the heavy fighting near 
Paris, the shortage of ambulances and drivers was so 
great that Miss Ellis sometimes drove for twenty 
hours at a stretch. At the end of 1914 she went to 
Serbia, where she managed the commissariat, store- 
keeping, and military returns for a group of five Red 

136 





MISS CHRISTOBEL ELLIS. 



To face j>. 136. 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 137 

Cross hospitals for over a year, till the final torrent of 
invasion swept over that unhappy country. 

On Miss Ellis's return to England she found that 
the demand for trained motor-drivers and mechanics 
was fast outpacing the supply. Her own successful 
experience of motor work under the roughest condi- 
tions had taught her how well the services of women 
might be used to supplement men, especially in Eng- 
land, with the advantages of good roads and help in 
difficulties usually to be had close at hand. Miss Ellis 
discussed her ideas with Lady Londonderry, who had 
organised the Women's Legion for war service, and 
as a result of their representations they were given 
permission to supply twenty women drivers as an 
experiment, to take up work under the War Office 
in May 1916. 

The great value of women's employment in motor 
work lies in the fact that the men whom they are 
releasing are precisely the most valuable class of 
workers — namely, trained mechanics, of whom there 
is an all too limited supply, which can only be aug- 
mented by the slow process of training others. Much 
of the work which the women drivers are undertaking 
is work upon which highly skilled men were wasted ; 
driving cars, for instance, for staff officers involves 
many empty hours simply spent in waiting. The 
women's reception by the men whose work they are 
taking over has been generous in the extreme. No 
trouble has been spared to help the girls in every 
possible way, and to assist them to maintain the high 
standard of Army efficiency. 

The girl drivers work long hours, for they have to 
be on duty by 8 a.m. and often do not put their cars 
away till late at night ; but they stand the strain of 



138 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

the life wonderfully well, and in spite of the bitter 
cold of last winter there were few who dropped from 
the ranks. 

It cannot, of course, be maintained that the 
women's mechanical knowledge equals that of some 
of the men they are replacing, but the standard of 
care of their engines and cars increases with their 
experience, and their capacity and skill in driving are 
undoubted. 

' Besides motor-driving there are other branches of 
women's work under the same department. There 
are corps of women despatch-riders — motor-bicyclists 
whose services are proving most valuable. Women 
are also taking over the charge of Army mechanical 
stores. This is responsible work which requires great 
accuracy, for if incorrect supplies are handed out, 
endless delay may be caused to the convoys. In the 
delicate and intricate work of assembling aeroplane 
engines, women also working under this department 
are proving more and more efficient. The numbers of 
women employed in this dilution of men's labour will 
soon reach many thousands, and the way in which 
they have succeeded in overcoming considerable pre- 
judice against their employment in the Army is in 
itself testimony to their efficiency. 

To Miss Ellis belongs the recognition due to a 
woman who has been able to give personal proof of 
women's capacity in a comparatively new field. 



XXX 

MADAME BRUNOT AND 
MISS MARION MOLE 

The experiences of Madame Brunot and her sister, 
Miss Mole, who lived at Cambrai for over two years 
under German rule, provide an example of patient 
and unselfish work, carried on in the most trying 
circumstances with splendid courage and devotion. 
Madame Brunot is of English birth, married to a 
Frenchman resident in Cambrai. On the outbreak 
of war she telegraphed to her sister, Miss Mole, to 
come and help her in an ambulance station which she 
was establishing in her house, affiliated to the Union 
des Femmes de France. Miss Mole left for Cambrai 
at once, arriving on August 13, 1914. There 
followed a few days of suspense during which the 
French and English armies were retreating day by 
day nearer to Paris, and then, on August 26, the 
German army poured through Cambrai. A battle 
raged in the streets in front of Madame Brunot's 
house and in the trenches behind her garden. Beds 
for twenty-two had been prepared, but in a very 
short time fifty wounded were picked up and laid on 
mattresses provided by people of the quarter. While 
Miss Mole was tending the wounded whom the 
French and German soldiers dragged inside their 
gates, Madame Brunot went out under fire with her 

139 



140 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

man-servant to rescue a French soldier who had been 
overlooked. The first dressings were done at once, 
but not until late at night was even a German doctor 
available. The next day the worst cases were sent 
to the civil hospital for operation, and then re- 
turned to the ambulance station to be cared for. 
During the following days and nights work was in- 
cessant, but after a fortnight all the wounded were 
transported as prisoners to Germany and the ambul- 
ance station practically closed. Miss Mole then went 
to one of the big hospitals in the town and was 
allowed to work for a time in the English wards, 
where she described the men as being "in an in- 
credible state of neglect." She was afterwards asked 
to take over the case of an Irish officer said to be 
dying of tetanus. By courageously begging some 
serum from the German authorities, in spite of a 
hostile reception, and then by her devoted nursing, 
she won the officer back to life, and was able to set 
him on the road to health before he was transported 
to Germany for internment. Madame Brunot, mean- 
while, had been doing all she could for the English 
wounded in the hospitals, visiting them constantly 
with gifts of fruit, eggs, milk, and puddings, and all 
the time doing her utmost to be allowed to reopen 
her ambulance station. In October 1914 the German 
permission was obtained. Madame Brunot and Miss 
Mole were therefore able to continue their nursing 
till the Germans again closed the ambulance station 
in March 1915. During these months the work was 
terribly hard, for the staff was shorthanded and the 
patients were practically helpless, being mostly cases 
of paralysis or men with amputated limbs. Miss 
Mole narrowly escaped losing her arm from blood- 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 141 

poisoning, contracted while dressing a very septic 
case. It was only after several operations and six 
months of painful and anxious treatment that Miss 
Mole recovered the use of her arm. After the closing 
of the ambulance station for the second time, the 
sisters did all they could for the English and French 
prisoners in Cambrai, arranging to send them food, 
gifts, and messages by every means they could devise. 

Early in 1916 they took up this work for the 
prisoners in a more organised way, working under 
the Mairie of the town, and using their house as a 
depot for garments and food. " Being very short of 
money," wrote Miss Mole, " I also gave lessons in 
English, by which means I was able to buy bread. 
This meant self-denial on the part of the people who 
sold it to me, as we were all on bread rations. Food 
was very scarce, and without the American ravitaille- 
ment we should certainly have starved." 

As time went on life grew increasingly difficult, 
and the German regime became daily more severe. 
Many of their friends were arrested, some evacuated 
from their houses, and others sent as hostages to 
Germany. In November 1916 Madame Brunot 
and Miss Mole were turned out of their house, and 
were thankful to take refuge in a tiny dwelling half 
shattered by aeroplane bombs. At last, all hope of 
further service being gone, they applied to join a train 
of refugees, and were allowed to leave Cambrai in 
December 1916. 

No women could have worked harder than these 
sisters during more than two years for the wounded, 
the prisoners, the desolate and poor of the forlorn 
city— cooking, sewing, giving without thought for 
themselves, uttering no complaints, forgetting their 



142 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

own need in the bitter need around them. A terrible 
journey home, preceded by the inevitable internment 
in Germany, might have seemed the finishing stroke ; 
but, undaunted by all they have seen and suffered, 
the sisters have gathered their courage to build up 
life afresh, and to restore something of all that was 
so suddenly crushed for them and for thousands 
more, in the world-wide disaster of the war. 



XXXI 
SOME ARMY NURSES 

The noble host of Army nurses contains few names 
which are known to the general public; but for 
those who scan the Gazette with care there stand out 
women whose deeds swell the ever-lengthening list 
of heroines, not only by shining acts of gallantry but 
by month after month of patient, devoted work. The 
wonderful Army Medical organisation has covered 
a vast field, and the endeavour has been throughout 
the war that in any place, in any region, where sick 
and wounded soldiers are likely to be congregated, 
there should always be a supply of nurses to minister 
to them. Soldiers removed from the battlefield are 
handed over from the ambulances directly to nurses, 
and are never from that time onwards, whether in 
trains, ships, or hospitals, at home, in France, or in 
the remotest of the battle zones, away from the care 
of trained nurses. 

The short accounts of work which follow have 
been received from typical nurses, who, following the 
traditions of their service, specially ask to remain 
anonymous. 

The first type of hospital nearest to the battlefield 
where nurses are allowed to work is the casualty 
clearing station. An idea of the work can be gained 
from a sentence in a nurse's letter home : " Fights in 

143 



144 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

the air are very common, but we are so busy we rarely 
have time to look." The casualty clearing stations 
have frequently been under bombardment, and bomb- 
dropping from aeroplanes is so usual an occurrence as 
to be hardly worth mentioning. Among the many 
reports of nurses under shell fire is that of a staff 
nurse who, " although knocked down by the explosion 
of a shell, resumed her work until all the patients 
were evacuated." Another nursing sister was present 
in the operating theatre when it was wrecked by the 
explosion of a 15-inch shell, which wounded her. In 
spite of her wound she remained at work for five 
hours, and displayed great courage in continuing to 
attend to patients." 

The following is a description by a nurse of 
the casualty clearing station work : "We were 
usually very full of patients — at one time convoys 
every other day, besides a constant stream in small 
numbers. Eighty-eight patients passed through the 
ward I was in in one day, leaving us fifty at night. 
If the fifty beds were full, the stretchers were placed 
on trestles until sometimes it was most difficult to 
move. We had a very good system with the new 
cases. Perhaps fifty would come in at once. They 
were got into bed, undressed, washed, and fed. The 
medical officer went round and looked at all the 
wounds. If he decided they were to be evacuated, 
red labels were placed on the bed-rail if they were 
to go by train lying, blue labels if they were to go 
sitting, and white labels if they must go by barge. 
Those for immediate operation had one with 'Theatre' 
written on, pinned on the outer blanket, so that we 
could tell at a glance what to do for each." 

Another nurse writes : " When I think of these 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 145 

boys being carried in wounded, ay, wounded almost 
beyond all recognition, but smiling bravely to the 
last, it makes one feel proud to be British. As our 
Padre said, we did God's own work up there." 

The nurses on the hospital trains have a fine record 
of service. Though less monotonous than the life in 
a stationary hospital, it is a curious existence to be 
living permanently in a train, continually travelling 
to and fro on one stretch of line, nursing in cramped 
quarters and under particularly tiring conditions. 
Three nurses recently received the Military Medal 
" for conspicuous bravery under fire, on No. 27 
Ambulance Train." The train was carrying a full 
load of nearly five hundred sick and wounded away 
by night from a town in the vicinity of the Somme 
front, when an aeroplane attack began. Five bombs 
fell in the immediate neighbourhood of the train. 
The windows were smashed and the lights went out. 
The train gave a heave which threw some of the 
patients out of their cots. One of the sisters is 
reported to have called out to the men in her 
coach : " Now, be quiet and good, boys, till I light 
a lamp." This she managed to do, and the men 
declared that her hand never trembled. The com- 
manding officer reports that "the sisters went about 
their work coolly, collectedly, and cheerfully, and 
that by their magnificent conduct they not only 
allayed alarm among the helpless patients and those 
suffering from shell shock, but caused both patients 
and personnel to play up to the standard which 
they set." 

Wonderful work, tco, has been done by the nurses 

in the hospital ships in conditions of ever-increasing 

danger. " We landed 1300 wounded yesterday morn- 

10 



146 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

ing," writes a hospital ship sister on the cross-Channel 
service. " It was a wonderful experience . . . nearly 
nine hundred were on the decks and steerage with 
broken arms, etc. All the eighty-four in my ward 
were stretcher cases. . . . The work was terrific." 
There is now an all too long list of nurses who have 
suffered shipwreck at the hands of the enemy, 
while some have lost their lives. When a great 
ship was recently torpedoed in the Mediterranean 
the nurses had a narrow escape. One of them 
has described her experience in the open boat as 
follows : " Our safety lay in keeping as far from the 
ship as possible, heavy seas making the pull to land 
out of the question. The huge swell increased the 
fear for the safety of our boat, as we were sitting waist- 
deep in water. Baling was of no use ; the harder we 
baled, the quicker we filled. A cry from the back of 
the boat caused all eyes to turn in time to see the 
ship first list to port side, then turn and take a long, 
straight dip beneath the waves. The sea was wilder 
and rougher than ever, and three gigantic waves in 
succession completely swamped our small boat, and 
all that was left to us now was to cling to the ropes 
in the boat and to each other." Eventually, however, 
the nurses were rescued just in time by a destroyer. 
Such experiences are no longer rare adventures — 
they are the hourly anticipation of all workers who 
serve in hospital ships, since the Germans have 
ceased to regard the badge of the Red Cross as a 
sacred and inviolable symbol. 

A description is given elsewhere in this book of 
work in a typical base hospital. If comparisons are 
possible, perhaps the most unselfish of all hospital 
work is that which falls to the lot of those sisters and 



WOMEN OF THE WAR 147 

nurses whose duty is the care of the sick and wounded 
German prisoners. To have to expend their energy 
and devotion on Germans is unwelcome work for any 
Englishwomen to-day, but the spirit in which these 
nurses accept their difficult task is well illustrated by 
the following account from a sister who is in charge 
of a ward of German prisoners in a great military 
hospital in London. She says : " The German 
prisoner of war in hospital in England comes on the 
whole as a pleasant surprise, though a nurse gets 
an unpleasant shock when she is detailed for duty 
amongst the prisoners. For several months I have 
been in charge of a large number of wounded 
Germans, and I find them on the whole quite good 
patients. At first their cleanliness and habits are not 
all that can be desired, neither do they bear pain 
well. But they give very little trouble, and are ex- 
tremely grateful for what is done for them. They 
are very observant, and make themselves quite use- 
ful as soon as they are able to get about. They 
are of great assistance to the nurses in carrying 
round screens, wheeling dressing-trollies, etc. Per- 
haps the most striking thing about them is the 
almost womanly care which, without exception, they 
give to a comrade more sick than themselves. As 
patients much may be said in their favour, and the 
work amongst them is a wonderful experience." No 
better proof could be given of how the true nurse's 
instinct dominates her entire work ; her care for her 
patients, and, above all, her appreciation of their 
good qualities, overcoming her natural and in- 
stinctive prejudice. 

To the nurses of the war, it will be admitted by all, 
belongs the crown of women's war service. Their 



148 WOMEN OF THE WAR 

ranks contain many heroines whose names and deeds 
will never be chronicled ; but their selfless devotion, 
their courage, their unquestioning acceptance of 
any risk, and their willing sacrifice of personal 
comfort, health, even life itself, will stand for all 
time in the proudest memorials of these tragic 
years. 



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